From Andersen Sanders
by Clar the Pirate
Summary: The Little Mermaid, but only if she decided she didn't really love the prince and took to gallivanting about the known world instead.
1. Bier Abbey

_To the Captain._

_From Clare._

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><p>To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.<p>

From Andersen Sanders, by the grace of God his friend.

Greetings to you, and heart-felt condolences that your nuptials must be postponed due to a decline on the part of the bride. This I think is the problem with convent-bred girls: they are cloistered away from all the world including its diseases and so fall prey to ill-spirits as soon as they are let out. Which leaves you in a bind – to marry a fragile flower or your own cousin? Better you than me to make such a decision, my lord, and may God save your soul.

An hour past, we crossed the border of the Danmarches into Tyksland. My charge seems happier the further inland we travel and so for the time being I shall plot our course to be obliging. The rumours that reached us in Kobenhaven were correct though exaggerated. A few opportunists have set themselves up at the border claiming to be collecting crossing taxes for the Crown from all those defenceless and desperate enough to believe them. They are villains but petty ones – not the battery of mercenaries we heard tell of. Dealing with it I leave to your discretion, though a whole regiment of uniforms would put the fear of God in them most splendidly.

I should not really be so flippant about convents, we are in fact cloistered ourselves for the night. I didn't feel my usual style of haunt would be quite the place for my charge. A monastery too wouldn't be quite the place for a young woman, but the brothers became astonishingly overcome with charity when they were told it was a _wealthy_ young lady who had undertaken a pilgrimage of silence. I am maligning the poor brothers inexcusably of course, and they gave me such a wonderful pint of their own brew too. I'm going to have to insist that you conquer just a little bit more of Tyksland when you come to the throne so that the brewery of Bier Abbey may become a national treasure of the Danmarches.

And I am filling up this page with nonsense and horsefeathers because I am trying to find something to say other than this is a fool's errand and I cannot serve you while babysitting a dumb mute. You know my thoughts on this matter, I retire.

.o.

A post-script for you, my lord, from your very own childminder extraordinaire (by luck if not skill). It happened, early this morning, that I was awake and looking out my window when who did I spy but our young female friend wandering about the abbey yard. So what, I ask you, could I do but follow her, self-proclaimed extraordinaire that I am?

The girl traipsed about in her usual fashion, peering at flowers and brushing her fingertips over the grass to test its softness. A bird piped up in a nearby tree and she ran to it, bobbing her head back and forth as though a bird herself, trying to catch a glimpse of it between the branches. She held out a hand behind her (in my direction though I had made certain she hadn't seen me) and after a few suspended moments, looked over her shoulder at me and blinked slowly.

The girl is more trouble than she's worth and what happened next was sheer dumb luck. I took her hand and hauled her back to the room she had been given – all the while praying that a brother would not come upon us and assume we had been trysting in the early dawn or something equally absurd – and as we were passing the kitchen, she stumbled. Yes, stumbled, did the girl who walks as a feather on the air, as light as only angels dare, something something where she chooses and I forget the rest. And what she stumbled upon was a skylark's nest.

It was well-disguised but somehow Angel Feet's said appendages found it. Upon the ground around it were worms meant to feed the babies inside but which had fallen short of their goal. In the nest also were a fortune of pretties that had caught the lark's eye, white gold and red rubies. At least that is what I thought at first, but such tricks the eyes and mind will play in dim light, they were only white leaves and red berries. Astonishing, for I never supposed skylarks nested so far south.

I shall end this missive here and hand it over to the brothers' most trusted courier. My best thoughts to you and your bride-to-be.

^Anders


	2. Flowers

To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.

From the Hon Andersen Sanders, youngest son of the Lensgreve af Orlamonde, has a title too. (_Alors_, my feathers have been ruffled, _hein_?)

_Hilsner til dig_, I trust this letter will find you well if not your bride. The girl, having been informed of the lady's indifferent health, now insists we stop at a chapel once a day to light a candle for her. I say 'insists', but that rather implies communication, a back and forth of exchange if you will. When I suggest that perhaps we should press on and not bother the nice people, she stops her horse, and if I try to take her reins to pull the horse on, she slides off the back of it – Angel Feet does not even have the decency to fall in an ignominious heap. I'm sure God appreciates her prayers but I would appreciate not being left to deal with the pack horse and hers as well as my own when I've not yet been granted that second pair of hands I've always wanted.

Yesterday, I was propositioned by a stiff-backed man who wanted to buy my spare horse, and well the girl would have been served if I had given into my less chivalrous instincts. It is surprising how many of these men travel about, in groups of maybe sixteen or twice that; I wonder that your bride's father has not cleared the roads of these vagrants. As the sun was setting last night, and the sky was dressed in red and gold, I happened to see an encampment of them, hidden from the road amongst a corps of oak, as I was watching a black eagle fly from its nest – you know how I love bird-watching. It is my own fault for preferring back roads to the main highways where these nuisances are rare.

But I am too easily distracted from the ills that grieve me most. Today I was party to a most strange encounter. Again, I use my words too strongly; 'party to' has also erroneously strong implications of my role in the matter. Angel Feet had enforced our stop at a pretty little chapel sitting on the edge a meadow of flowers. As she exited the chapel, fragrant of wax, a woman emerged from amongst the flowers. I tightened my grip on the reins of our horses in case she had nefarious designs upon them.

The woman was no taller than the foxglove that bloomed around her. Her hair was very long and unbound, pale enough that it showed grass stains at the tips; her face was not as young as I first supposed but delicately crumpled like a carnation petal with the wrinkles of age.

"Hail, princess," she called out to my charge. "How now? That is no place for one like as yourself."

The girl stood as if transfixed, and then she began to tremble and her hand jerked out, clutching at air. It was the first graceless gesture I had ever seen her make.

The woman drifted forward and took her hand in both of hers. "_Der nu_." Her voice was warm as spring rain. "Which of my sisters have you met, princess?" She breathed deeply and flicked her tongue over the girl's fingertips. "Ah, no need; I smell the sea on you."

I decided things were getting a little out of hand, and stepped forward with a pretty, guileless face. "Grandmother, I think you are mistaken. Why I'm sure we've never met you before, nor any of your kin, and my cousin's no more royal than I am."

She smiled mistily. "There's blood as blue and pesky as forget-me-nots in thee, boy." (_Boy_, I?) "But this lady far outranks thee yet. Thou art well-honoured to hold her horse." (_Alors_ ... I grit my teeth yet.)

"Respectfully, grandmother–"

A finger waved aimlessly in front of my nose. "Boy, dost thou think me about in my wits? I'm not so easily fooled by a pretty face. If you please, princess, would you have tea with me?"

The girl nodded dumbly, and once again I tried intervened. "I cannot and will not let my cousin be abducted by a dubious stranger."

The woman smiled again. "I am the witch of the flowers."

And thus apparently was my objection satisfactorily over-ruled. The girl was lead off into the meadow, myself trailing behind – like the lackey I am. As we walked, a stream of prattle issued from the witch about the flowers that caught the girl's eye which I did not bother remembering.

We came at last, thoroughly wetted from boot to hip by our trudge through rough-grown greenery, to what I suppose one might call a house, if one weren't too strict in the definition. It might have been at one point a smallish folly, but creeping flowers and vines had twined themselves so thickly between its columns that they created solid walls. The smell inside was fragrant, pleasantly so, but overpowering enough that my nose gave up after fewer than five minutes. The girl and I seated ourselves on wicker chairs as the witch pottered about measuring dried leaves into a tea pot she then set over a simple stove by the back wall. Above our heads, was a bower to rival Titania's where one presumes the witch slept.

It was a very one-sided tea: The witch speaking of inconsequentialities and asking for the girl's opinion on every point; Angel Feet, naturally enough, not replying; and myself brooding manfully over a steaming cup of stewed rosehips.

At last I set down my cup with deliberation, and began to inform the witch in a tone which brooked no interference of our imminent departure, but before I could finish, she picked my cup back up and tutted over the dregs.

"What do you see, grandmother?" asked I. And you are well-served that I did ask, my lord, for you will enjoy what came next.

"What do you think, princess?" enquired the witch. "I see a great change in his future, isn't that what we see? Great clouds louring over his life that will break him or break apart beneath the light of the sun, _ja_?"

"And the woman? I shall feel terribly hard done-by if there is no mysterious woman lurking in my future. Perhaps you would like to see my palm," I offered.

The witch took it and turned it over and back, and then the same with its mate. She looked to the girl who remained silent, away, and sniffed. "There is not a woman on this earth perfect enough for thee."

_Precisely_. Have I not always told you it was so?

My satisfaction would have lasted longer had I not caught, again, the witch casting a glance at Angel Feet as though she was the ultimate authority upon the subject. Goaded beyond patience, I snapped, "She cannot answer you! She has no speech for she has no tongue."

"Wherefore hast thou neglected her deepness so shamefully?" The witch of the flowers stretched out her hands towards the girl beseechingly. "I beg a thousand pardons, princess, I had heard from the flowers of Bier that you chose not to speak. My sister's wrong must be set to rights at once."

Naturally I wished to know of what _i den vide verden_ the witch was speaking.

"The witch of the sea has cast her net upon you, princess, and there is only one with power over the sea. Thou must seek out the moon, boy."

_Og så_, I and the girl with the angel feet set forth to seek the moon. A grand adventure; I feel deliciously fictional.

* * *

><p><em>Anyone who has ever studied Shakespeare should be aware of this distinction. To address someone as 'you' is a sign of respect, like the French '<em>vous_'; 'thou' indicates intimacy or that the speaker is of a higher status than the person they are addressing – guess which way the witch was using it._


	3. Moon

To Vald.

From Anders.

I can't think of any way to write this letter and retain your good opinion. As you read it will you please remember who he is that has been your friend since you were eleven years old? Remember that he is not given to lying, only stretching the truth sometimes for the good of comedy or our country. Can you find it in your heart to believe me when the particulars of my tale become too implausible for belief?

Or perhaps it shall be easy for such faith, as mine host has offered his own trusted mode of courier. Who knows, it might be that you received this message in a moonbeam. It is unlike me, but I do trust him that this message will go unmolested – because he is who he is so what can a poor mortal do?

Write a letter to his friend in a timely and logical fashion, I suppose.

My last letter, unless I'm very much mistaken, was shortly after meeting the witch of the flowers – I suspect you thought my description was another code, but no, she was exactly the outlandish personage my words suggested (and such a small strangeness she now seems, hardly noteworthy). My charge and I travelled a further week to reach the lake of the plains to which we had been directed as the moon's resting place from the glare of the sun. Each night I endeavoured to ask shelter of an abbey, and in every one I found (and perhaps the girl helped) the same well-hidden stockpiling of Danmarchian food and money as we did at Bier. And the plain-clothed regiments of soldiers still camp and march upon the back roads. I wish I could tell you I believe them to be mercenaries – though it would barely make the situation better – but their Tyks is too good, and while their gear and armour and the food they willingly share with strangers are all unmarked, I found the royal eagle sealed upon a letter in the squad leader's saddle-bags. The King of Tyksland is playing your father false.

Forgive me if you think I overstep the bounds of my rank and our friendship, but I wish you would hold on marrying his daughter – stall at least until we have figured out what the old Eagle's plan is. I know you love her, but you needs must love your country more. Troops will be needed at the border, and I have given you the excuse of it.

My charge is waking, I'll continue anon.

.o.

She is sleeping again – or perhaps just unconscious.

We came, late last night, to the lake of the plains. So still it was it seemed God had placed a great mirror upon the grass that the angels might see their faces and tidy their hair in it. Stars were scattered upon its surface, and the bright path of the moon as it set, growing smaller and smaller. I do not know how long it was before I realised that the moon was in fact coming closer – stepping down from the sky upon its own silver trail. Certainly I did not _believe_ it until he was near enough to shake my hand.

How does one describe the Moon? He is a youth, at least he is so by his form which seems too slight for the weight of his head let alone the responsibility of the night. His eyes are too old and set too deep in his face. The impression of deep shadows hangs from him though he gleams with a dull yellow light even at rest. It was not an easy meeting, he is not an easy person.

Before we on the shore could do more than babble an apology for interrupting the time of his rest – which was met with indifferent, weary civility –s the witch of the lake appeared upon the surface of her domain. At first it seemed that she was made of stars, but as she moved closer to the Moon and took his arm with a light hand, she became his mirror-image – pale skin, shadows, haunted eyes, and all. She extended a placid welcome to us, and all together we entered the lake.

It is so quiet here. I do not know what I would have expected of a palace which is beneath the lake and yet also _is_ the lake. These things are too strange for me; my pen fails at the telling of them. The walls appear to be walls but from the corner of one's eyes they bend, fluid as water. It is cold and quiet and dark; we are so deep that the sun's light does not reach, illumination in this place is from the Moon. More austere and still than a cathedral, it should be peaceful here yet my soul cannot find rest– though it seems I am the only one uneasy.

I should tell you more, I am sure you wish to know more about what one eats at dinner with the Moon and what colour the curtains are (there aren't any actually), but this letter is already an epistle in the epic style and I have not come to the point of our being here.

She is calling for more water. Yes, she speaks. Anon.

.o.

I will spare you the hours, it seemed, of my standing about with my mouth open and my mind refusing to believe that I could be in such a place, in the company of such persons. In a grand chamber, the Moon and his silent mistress sat upon a dias, posed as for a royal portrait of monarch and consort, and we left to dither at their feet. They were not genial hosts; speaking only when spoken to, and never to each other unless in a communion palm-to-palm as they held each other's hand. I was – 'scared' is not the right word – a little intimidated perhaps, until Angel Feet, in her usual imperturbable way examining a wall carved into a likeness of waves which had caught her attention, held out her hand behind her then looked over her shoulder to blink at me.

Like a rider coming to the crest of a hill and being blinded by the sun setting before him, I was struck by that look and reminded of the thousand small ways in which her silence had, at one time or another, irritated the ever-living _enfer_ out of me: the frustration of our inadequate sign language, her fuming impotence or quiet bleakness when she opened her mouth but no sound came out, my sometimes inability to understand her and those moments when I _knew_ she was simply using her muteness as an excuse to go about her own way without my having any say in the matter. And then it was an easy matter to find the words.

"My lord, my companion was cursed by the witch of the sea. Her tongue was taken from her, and in the year that I have known her I have not known her to make a sound. I petition my lord the Moon, as he who holds sway over the tides and impulse of the sea, to undo this act of caprice – so mote it be."

"Dear Andersen Sanders, now you speak of things you cannot know. Or did the princess tell you it were so?" Our host spoke in a voice as steady and pure as the moonlight which pushed back shadows to the corners of the room.

"The witch of the flowers made some remarks, and said to seek you out, that you would right a wrong." Under his seeing eye, my tongue grew thick and cumbersome in my mouth. "I assumed, presumed – perhaps in my haste I..."

When, Vald, was the last time you knew me not to finish a sentence? That will tell you of how it is to be in the presence of the Moon as words cannot.

"The little princess did renounce the power of speech to gain a leg 'pon which to stand, is that not so?"

At a loss, and all but able to taste the cusp of some greater circumstance at play, I deferred to the girl who shook her head in answer.

"Or 'twas for something more essential yet?"

Her silent assent was so long in coming I almost thought she dared to ignore the Moon's question as she so often did mine.

"And is it worth it." It was not a question. (Vald, I am not delaying a revelation under the pretence of good story-telling – I would love to frustrate you so but I have no idea myself. Yet.)

The witch of the lake inclined her head towards the Moon and though I could have sworn no words passed between them, he nodded slightly.

"The princess struck a bargain with the sea witch knowing all too well what then the price of it would be. 'Tis not for me to interfere with private understandings entered into willingly."

I thought that then the end of the matter and turned to my charge to comfort her. The Moon held up his hand. "But it is said that I am whimsical, so then I see no fault that I should favour a request made by one of my own."

An epithet to have me prevaricating like a Herre in the House of Peers, "My lord, you will give my companion a terrible notion of my character saying such things." Not that she seemed overly surprised.

"Often have I seen you out at night, Andersen Sanders, for all that you are brightly cast as is my sister. And never have you cursed my face, though I have giv'n you cause for it."

"The only reason a person would have to curse the Moon's light is if they wore polished metal or black, and I am many things, my lord, but a fool is not one of them. You are as constant as the sun, but in your own private way, and if any knew you so poorly as to call you whimsical then they do not deserve to be abroad in the night."

"Your tongue is but one reason why I love thee, Anderson Sanders, and so it pleases me to grant the same unto your charge. Approach, princess."

As the girl came to stand in front of him, the Moon turned to the witch of the lake and her lips parted silently as water. Vald, I swear this is true. The Moon reached inside the witch's mouth and pulled out her tongue, all without a sound. Immediately as it was taken, her tongue replenished itself with a sound like a trickling brook. The Moon held out his cupped hands to the girl and she drank from them 'til they were empty.

For a moment, I breathed a sigh of relief for it seemed the ceremony was over, the deed done, and my presence before these stranger beings no longer required. But then she opened her mouth, and from her throat ripped the harshest scream I ever heard. It writhed like a tortured thing, went on and on until her voice could bear it no more. She collapsed in a dead faint. The chamber echoed with pain.

I crossed to her immediately but could do nothing more than cushion her from the cold, damp floor. Turning upon the Moon, I demanded to know what he had done.

"I did give her nothing but a tongue. There should have been no pain in it for her."

Placid _gaurinn_, to be unmoved – removed – after hearing such a cry.

He looked at me with the steady unblinking gaze of the moon. "I have seen so many things in the night." And so answering my thoughts, he left.

There was nothing I could do but lift my charge up, carry her to her bed, and wait. And begin a weighty tome's worth of letter to you, lucky thing. Have you given up on it yet? Alas, we must press on or you shall never catch up with the present day.

I left this letter and was by her side when she woke, her hand in mine.

"How are you?" I asked, an inspired beginning.

She made a garbled noise, choked and made our sign for water. I reached out to the wall where there was a spout I had been shown the use of. Pinching it between my fingers, I pulled upon it and it spooled from the wall like yarn from a ball of wool until it reached her lips. Everything is liquid in the palace of the witch of the lake.

"_Tak_," she thanked me having drunk her fill. "It is strange to make sounds from air. My throat is ... not-wet a lot." Can I describe her voice to you? Hoarse still, with no accent I know. She speaks like she's singing, each sound running into the next with only the click and hiss of consonants to separate them.

"Then have some more water. Are you in pain? You screamed and fainted when the Moon restored your tongue." She was so pale still, it was unnatural. "I would be most obliged if you'll say you are well. It would be a terrible thing were I honour-bound to challenge our host over the matter – the world would be a very sad place without a moon in it and frankly I have no wish to take on the responsibility."

"You're an idiot. It is good so it feels to say that out of my head."

I might have guessed it would be so; not without five minutes of gaining possession of a tongue and Angel Feet uses it to insult me.

"I meant it as a nice ... a compliment. You work so hard to seem foolish," she yawned.

What little strength her rest had given her was fast waning, so I did not pursue that thought. "What did the Moon do that you felt it necessary to scare me halfway to an early death?"

Her eyelids drooped and lifted after a moment with effort. "Not my tongue. My feet. It was a year of screaming in my lungs."

"Your feet? What ails them, are they hurting you now?"

"No, it's only when we stand." Her eyes closed again and couldn't be dragged open. I nudged her back upon her pillow, pulled the comforter (cool green silk) up around her shoulders, and, though she was near gone, could not help but ask what happened when she stood.

"Each step is on a hundred sharp knives and I feel my life bleeding out through my feet."

"Even when–"

But she was already asleep.

Vald, we have shamefully abused her. How many times did we ask her to dance for our pleasure and how many times did she agree without compunction?


	4. Moon II

To Vald.

From Anders, still a resident of the lake bottom.

Well. I don't believe there is any approach that would ease one's way into the revelation I have to tell. Do you remember that the girl seemed to like fish more than was usual? That she had no idea of any social mores or strictures, wandering about where she pleased with whomever she wished, bedding down wherever she liked up to and including beneath rose bushes in the Stegdrøm Garden and in front of your door like a faithful hound? Do you remember wondering where she could have come from?

"The sea."

I kid you not; I could not make this up. "In a boat?" I hazarded.

"No, in a palace."

"So your family is of noble estate."

She blinked at me. "Yes. Have not two witches and the Moon called me 'princess'?"

"And your father the king has his palace...?"

"A week's swim north-west of Hanstholm."

"There is nothing north-west of Hanstholm, unless you mean Norgemåde and I would know you if you were Norgen."

"_Det_, it is not true." (I shall spare you the next few minutes in which I was forced to defend my knowledge of the Norgen royal family and lesser nobility. She may be an invalid yet but one cannot simply allow bald statements to go unchallenged, it sets a terrible precedent.) "_I tillegg som_ I never was saying I am Norgen."

"Then what are you?"

"Something that was a mermaid – I am not sure I'm one any longer when I have legs."

Pray you, Vald, what does one say to something like that? I can tell you what one should not say.

One should not tell the speaker that they're talking nonsense and imply by your tone that they possibly have gone mad, because the speaker will then give one a look that so clearly says 'do you not remember where we are? who is our host? and what you have seen?' that one wonders why one went to the trouble of procuring a tongue at all.

Also, one shouldn't attempt to trap the speaker by quizzing them about life in their oceanic kingdom because the answers will be given with a bland stare and insolent matter-of-factness.

(Incidentally, mermaids breathe as fish do through gills; keep their eyes open underwater which does not sting them, because it just doesn't – a likely story; and sea anemones are a delicacy, the body eaten first and the fronds separated to nibble upon.)

_For helvede_, Vald, it's too impossible.

.o.

When the Moon departs the lake for the night suddenly the lake and the palace within it are awash with moonshine and starlight. That is not the right word. Light becomes almost solid as it shafts through the water, a temple of luminous pillars that hold up the surface of the lake. The witch of the lake is a loyal mistress; the sun's light she turns away but the Moon she embraces, accepts with her whole being.

When I tried to ask her what the witch of the sea had done to the girl's feet, she turned from me as though I did not exist and glided away. She is cold to the depths of her bones – that is assuming she has any.

.o.

I requested a second audience with the Moon this morning when he returned from his wandering, and was lead to a small private room sunk deep into the floor of the lake. The walls glistened wet-black as otter's fur beneath the steady dull light of the Moon's countenance. I'll not lie, it made my skin crawl, the deep and the dark of that room.

The Moon answered my remark upon it in his pale steady voice, "My sister Sun keeps jealous watch over my comings and my goings" and something else about his privacy, or darkness like a blanket? _pis det_.

There is something strange in the air (I use the word loosely) here. I _cannot_ remember things properly, only the impression of the general gist and direction of a conversation. To own the truth, the exact words exchanged in my first audience with the Moon are largely made-up – all but for when he called me his own, that is clear in my mind.

He asked me what I wished to know, and I said if it pleased him, he might direct me as to how to keep my charge from agony when she stood. Perhaps you'll think I should have asked a more nationally pertinent question, but of how much interest can the political affairs of humans be to a celestial body? There is a strange magic about his person and so the question I asked was both strange and magic.

What was needed, I was told, was a shoe transparent and weightless that would guard her feet from the unforgiving ground.

"Do you mean glass?" I guessed after a long period of hesitation. "My lord, she is not of a particularly transparent or weightless stature, if you take my meaning; any such shoes would shatter."

"They must be fired harder than a diamond cryst, as only, in this world, my sister Sun could manage it."

The Sun, sister of the Moon, wiles away the night, _pas de course, _upon Sonneschlafen Berg.

I am aware that it is far to the East of my consignment, but I am not indulging an idle whim; I had planned to discover how far the mystery of the food stores ran even before we reached the lake of the plains. (Could it be innocuous? Has there been a drought? Or a blight? I cannot think of a time or place when a report of Tyksland agriculture has been discussed in my hearing.)

Besides which, what country can claim an acquaintance with the Moon and the Sun? Surely it is worth my going even if only in the name of discovery. The Spanien have their Amerikas but the Danmarches shall claim the heavens.

And walking among the common populace is never a waste of time – for how else does one gauge the mood of a country, take its temperature, and sample its gossip, its fears, and its dreams?

You didn't hear her scream, Vald. _For fanden da også_, I can't retain my humanity and not try.

.o.

Can you stand a last post-script? You should be informed, for sake of future clarity, that my charge now has a name, after a fashion. The conversation went thusly when I asked her what it was:

"My name is the colour of a dolphin's click when it refracts against fire coral."

She stared at me with her steady eyes, daring me to call her bluff.

"I'll call you Delfin."

"As you wish; Delfin is acceptable to me."

It is one of the things I like least about the girl, that she is capable of absolute expressionlessness. It is frustrating, if not verging on impolite. And so I told her, to which she replied,

"And your face is constantly mobile with expressions, but they are as much a shield as those I lack. You show only what you want people to think you are feeling. Such a useful skill for the inconsequential younger son of a tivandsgreve."

At least she's clever.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>If you haven't read the original of <em>The Little Mermiad_ in a while, you might like to take the time - despite the obviously wildly divergent plot I'm trying to stay true to the character of what Andersen wrote. And if anyone speaks Danish, I apologise for the mess of it I've made with the help of Google Translate._


	5. Lake

To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.

From Andersen Sanders, has it been so long? my sincerest apologies.

Hail the still-bachelor prince! I believe you should begin to consider the possibility that your bride does not wish to marry you and is finding excuses to avoid the happy state. Do you think it would help if I sent your beloved a letter outlining all your good points? Or you could read this list to her if she will trust you not to embellish.

One, he is the crown prince of the Danmarches and quite wealthy in his own right.

Two, he's unusually tall which I understand is comforting to a lady.

Three, he has a very solid jaw, but his nose is easily broken. Plan accordingly.

Four, he owns his own boat though he will not let anyone borrow it unless they abase themselves before him.

Five, his hair smells nice when it is clean.

Before I forget, I must tell you the news. Our quest to the moon was a total crock of _stront,_ but the scenery was very pretty and I managed to get the mud off my boots eventually. The excuse for boot-black in this country is simply atrocious. Nevertheless, the up-shot of the whole business is that the girl can now talk. As we were walking by moonlight, she slipped in the aforementioned mud, fell and hit her head, which must have shaken something loose for now she simply cannot stop babbling.

This little jaunt about the countryside is much more pleasant when accompanied by conversation. We talk about the weather and her native home in Novaja Semlja, and have discovered a mutual interest in bird-watching – though she will persist in calling them fish. Angel Feet is still a wildly frustrating creature when she wishes to be.

We've been stumbling across more skylark nests. It's a wonder there are any left in the Danmarches, there are so many. The mysteries of ornithology! I don't know what I would do without them.

Give my very best to my father if he's following his usual habit of autumning over in Kobenhaven.

* * *

><p><em>Okay, now maybe it is a little bit of a game. <em>


	6. Matchmaking

To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.

From Andersen Sanders, bachelor, praise be to God.

Greetings, my lord, so good to hear from you and you may now pass this letter to your beloved – you've heard the argument forthwith on previous occasions and it cannot interest you. In fact, I find it astonishing that you did not regale your betrothed with it and save me the trouble of having to write it down. For shame, my lord, think of the wasted ink. But I digress.

Mademoiselle, did I detect in the words my lord writ to me a certain _impulse_, one might say, that attacks all females as soon as they become betrothed and never leaves them be until they are five years dead in the ground? I speak of course of the irresistible desire of happily-situated woman to match-make. And I so humbly beg your leave as to present a recent dialogue between myself and my travelling companion, Delfin, as evidence of the futility of any such idea in my direction.

I: If I'm not mistaken Vald's fiancée means to have me married, best of luck to her. (Said as I read my lord's letter – this is a very direct piece of evidence, you'll forgive me.)

Delfin: Is there no woman perfect enough for you?

I: Pray, what?

Delfin: It is what the witch of the flowers said, when she looked at your palm. I was of wondering if you thought that true.

I: True enough.

Delfin: Speak seriously.

I: I am always serious, Angel Feet. I do not believe I will ever meet a woman who is truly accomplished in everything I require of my wife, no.

Delfin: You're an idiot.

I: No, I'm not, that's the problem. I am remarkably intelligent, possess charm and good manners, am more than passing conversant on matters of politics, history, art, religion and science, play with some little skill every sport and instrument I have picked up, can sing and dance in equal measure, know a smattering of more languages than I can remember, and would die for my country at a moment's notice. That is who I am, without modesty or vanity, and _I_ exist so I see no reason why I should settle – nay, why I should not _expect_ the woman I fall in love with to be my equal if not better. However, the only person I have found to match me is my friend Valdmar and I dare say that wouldn't suit. (Don't fear, my dear, I have no serious designs upon your husband-to-be, I swear it.)

Delfin made then a series of strange noises.

I: You're not frothing at the mouth so I don't think it's a fit.

Delfin: I was telling you that you're an idiot in four different languages. Unfortunately however, a year at the prince's residence has not been long enough to acquaint me with all the nuances of your arts, politics, and competitive croquet, so perhaps you are correct after all in your arrogance.

I: The sting at the end of its tail cannot disguise the refreshing fact that you just now conceded that I was right. I feel we are turning over an exciting new leaf in the volume of our friendship.

Delfin: Do not be counting the number of your caviar before it spawns.

I, naturally knowing no more than a gentleman ought on the subject of fish, did not deign to reply.

Mademoiselle, I retire.

My lord, today's rendition of the most irritating female to walk the face of the earth was a rondo in the key of D sharp.

* * *

><p><em>To clear up confusion: <em>_privy (adj) 1. Made a participant in knowledge of something private or secret: was privy to classified information. So if we could all vacate our minds from whichever gutters have taken their fancy, most obliged to you._

_Captain, your ball I believe._


	7. Schmuddeligen Koff

To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.

From Andersen Sanders, well in most of his particulars.

Greetings again though it has not been three days since my last letter – three days since I wrote it, who knows how long Tyks messengers take to get anywhere. I hope this missive will find you as well as the last and that you continue to find greatest pleasure and comfort in your bride-to-be though it seems a great shame that the royal chapel is dire want of structural whatevers just when you had need of it. I could not think of a greater pity than the further postponement of your nuptials, though of course it would not be proper for the crown prince to be married anywhere but.

Now, should it happen to come to the ears of your august parent, or indeed the ears of my own esteemed father, that there occurred a scuffle of possibly international incident in a tavern among the foothills of Sonneschlafen Berg, I should be most obliged if you would inform them that while I take full responsibility for my actions, as the true gentleman does, I was very much provoked and any man of honour would have done precisely the same.

It all began when realisation dawned that monks in this country have a fear of heights and there was to be no convenient abbey for our rest. Night was fast drawing its wings around us, so I made the decision that we would take rooms at the nearest inn – the Schmuddeligen Koff as it turned out, dingy little place with little to recommend it, but when needs must greater trials than these have been endured.

Having dispatched Delfin to settle her room and wait for me to order us a repast, I lingered by the bar a while next to two gentlemen whose collective mass was not unakin to a house. By the looks directed at me, it appeared they resented my resting weary limbs in their vicinity – and as their conversation was entirely taken up with a marvellous flower press I am not surprised, I would not wish to be caught dead speaking to such a subject either. So you see I was very much minding my own business; taking in the atmosphere, such as it was.

However it was then that my charge had the brilliant notion to seek me out. You have seen the girl of the angel feet walking before, my lord, so you will know what effect she had upon a room of men a trifle in their cups. As she skirted around my brawny neighbours, the bigger of the two with a face like a small belligerent dog waylaid her. She blinked slowly at him and attempted to pass again, he stretched his arm out across her body and gripped her shoulder. She indicated politely that he should let her go, he leered and pulled her closer. With a deft twist, she danced her way out from under his restraining arm and it might have ended there except that the dog took it upon himself to lay hands upon my lady's southern regions. I was out of my seat and my fist connected with his face before I quite knew what was happening.

I said he was the size of a house, I think you'll find he was somewhat _larger_ than that and with reflexes surprisingly quick for one of his size. Thus it was I discovered myself flat on my back trying to suck in air and wheezing out language I fear was less than gentlemanly. The mountain had the good grace to let me gain my feet once more before landing me another facer, this time blacking my eye. As I blinked my sight back into order, it occurred to me that the small belligerent dog was not unfamiliar to me. Ducking another blow, I searched my memory and hit upon it; my sparring partner was the Baron of Dieberei. The realisation froze me a moment too long and I was once again given the opportunity to admire the ceiling and undersides of tables.

"My lord Dieberei, a very good evening to you," I greeted him from my prone position, sketching a bow.

"You're Danmarchan?" he scowled. And I had been using my very best Tyks too.

"The Honourable Andersen Sanders, youngest son of the Lensgreve af Orlamonde, at your service."

"You're far from home, boy." 'Boy' again. Is there a youthful _je ne sais quoi _about my face?

"Travelling as a companion to the very honoured guest of HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, who wished to see some of the world. You have not been formally introduced to her but are somewhat intimately acquainted with unmentionable areas of her anatomy."

"A lady would not walk a common tap room."

"Surely by your presence's grace it is made uncommon and fit for a lady."

The Baron chewed upon that for a while, unable to find his way clear without insulting himself, and finally decided, "You are a long way east."

"The lady travels where she chooses."

"For what purpose?"

"The lady chooses as she wishes."

"And does the lady speak for herself?"

"My lady shares her words with those worthy of them." That I will admit was not so well done.

"Careful, boy," the Baron warned me in a voice drawn sinisterly between his gritted teeth. "You walk a fine line, coming to a foreign country and assaulting its noblesse. Adding insult to injury would be very foolish – wars have started over less."

"I had not realised the Danmarches and Tyksland were so very near the brink of conflict."

The Baron gave me a glowering look and turned his back in deliberate disrespect. I took the high road seated upon my high horse and let the affront pass unchallenged.

.o.

I retired to my room and thought it best to write immediately of what had occured, laying down my pen only when the daughter of the house brought me a side of raw beef. Delfin watched with an expression of mistrust that only deepened when I placed it over my blackening eye. At her lengthy and unattractively stubborn insistence, I am forced to admit that it is a strange curative to the uninitiated, though it was not explained to me why its strangeness should be of importance since it clearly _works_. I am daily learning patience and the value of an outsider's opinion – you would be so proud of me, my lord.

However, I could hardly be expected to tolerate insubordination. "You were supposed to stay in your room," I reminded her. "I told you it would not be safe, that you should lock the door and rest until I brought food, for more reasons than one."

Delfin picked up the steak gingerly between thumb and forefinger. "What is done with it now? Surely, you do not eat it."

"You are supposed to be staying off your feet as much as possible."

"You cannot carry me everywhere," she tossed back, and fortunately I saw it for the attempt to distract me into a different argument that it was.

"I suggested that _once _and have fully repented my sin. If you will not do it for yourself then do it for my sake. You clearly attract trouble when you're allowed to roam free and I only have so many eyes."

"I am not remembering asking you to hit that man."

"If you hadn't been walking around with your hips rollicking about, I would not have had to," I informed her acidly.

"Rollicking? I don't know this word."

"It means what your hips do when you walk and they sway."

She traced a curve with the speculative attention she usually reserved for birds and oddly-shaped rocks. "Should they not?"

"Not like yours do all the time so a man can't help but notice. How can you possibly wriggle so much? It's like two cats having a hard-fought and fascinating battle beneath your skirts."

"Cats... _cats_? You're wrong, I'm not so unnatural. Others have told me I have a pleasing shape, whatever you may think."

"Which others? No, I will not be distracted. You have a very pleasing shape. The point is you have _a lot_ of very pleasing shape so you need to be careful."

"In Novaja Semlja, we would freeze to death if we were not well insulated."

"That's very ... practical, but here you need to be more careful in case I can't be there to protect you. What if there had been more than one Baron, or I had gone to check our horses, or any number of other things which would have meant you were alone, unarmed, and in danger?"

"You should take a care not to be hit very often. It makes you boring."

"_Boring_?"

"Your nonsense is not so amusing when you repeat it to death."

She is the only person in the world with the unwitting skill to wholly flabbergast me. "Let me make this clear to you, Delfin, first of all, I don't speak nonsense – and if I did speak nonsense it is because only nonsensical people think it needful to always make sense. Also I am _not_ boring, and if I am repeating myself I ever so humbly beg your pardon for caring what becomes of you. Now _for Guds skyld_ would you please tell me why you did not deign to stay in your room so I can try to accommodate next time?"

She blinked. "I grew bored without you."

My lord, answer me if you can, are all females this obtuse or is it simply my own lucky fate to be stuck with the most illogical? If I have not succumbed to a violent headache, we shall leave this place tomorrow and I shall be glad of it.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>This AN may strike you as pedantic, but I am very aware that one of Anders' comments - while congruous with his emotional state and the historical period he's in - does not at all jibe with my own convictions and it's an important one, so: the way a person moves, dresses and behaves is _never_ an invitation or an excuse for unwanted physical contact, verbal abuse, or sexual harassment let alone rape. The victim is not to blame - it is always and only the perpetrator's fault. And end politics._

_Captain, all eyes on you._


	8. Sun

_Here there be_

* * *

><p>To Vald.<p>

From Anders.

It is good to write freely again. We reached the resting place of the Sun this evening past and once again I was provided of a trusted courier. Tell me, did it escape notice? For the Sun assured me that it would but I cannot see how a dragon, even a miniature one, could avoid detection.

Before I give a full account of Sonneschlafen, please would you give my sincerest apologies again to your father. Sometimes I hate the Andersen Sanders I have created; he will not say anything seriously. There is no excuse for being so utterly irresponsible – not only to start a fight but to be so blind as not to recognise the Baron of Dieberei. I can only be thankful I had the presence of mind to lose before worse could come of it, and swear faithfully it will not happen again. There is no need to tell me I am a fool, I already have every way I know, just tell me if your father wishes me to come home before I can cause more damage. The Sun says the dragon will wait to return with your reply.

My tale for you, but briefly. Just as the sun set, the grass of the foothills gave way to scree and a voice both carrying and light hailed us by name."Andersen Sanders! Princess!" High above on the face of the mountain was a pinprick of piercing light, as if the brightest lamp in the world had been abandoned there so that the owner might have a minute of darkness and sleep.

"We have been watching your approach for days," the voice whispered in my ear now. "Creatures move so slowly as they crawl upon the earth. Stay where you are; we will have the witch of the mountain fetch you up."

Beneath our feet, the very rocks began to shift and slid; scurrying upwards and we upon them. Delfin swayed violently once and took my arm, and I allowed her to do so. The skittering stones carried us on a steep path up and across the face of the mountain, scuttling from one narrow ledge to another. Soon, I could not bear to look down at the shrinking world, and the air froze in my throat.

When the stones settled, the voice was once more in my ear, urging me onward into a cavern of glittering mica carved into a thousand faceted faces to catch and multiply the light. How unlike the Moon's lake – there are no shadows in the Sun's presence.

My words multiply too though I had meant to keep them few. The trouble is there is no shared experience between us that is like this. I can try: Do you remember at last year's Twelfth Night, when you took my arm, nodded at the Dread Princess of the Arabische, and said 'If there could be a woman more beautiful than her, she would rule the world'? And yet the Sun is nothing like that. One presumes she is a lady of surpassing beauty because she could not be anything else, but her person shines with a diamond luminance sharper again than the Moon that leaves her face a mystery. It's near painful to look at her, and I've an idea that she has judged that 'near' to an exact degree.

In protest, my eyes slid past the lady to her companion, and quickly shied away. Beside her was a craggy, grey creature without eyes or any human feature; still, silent, and of hideous crushing weight. The witch of the mountains is terrible the way a mountain can be terrible but cramped within a cavern only twice my own height it had none of a mountain's size that imbues majesty and commands awe. I had thought this quest would be marvelous, and it is to be sure, but this place – this sharp, hard, dazzling place – the palace beneath the lake was easier. And there was more to come.

Delfin swayed again and doubled over, pressing her hands hard against the glistering floor.

"The princess is unwell." The voice again weighed upon my neck and shoulders, like sunshine on a summer's day. "Why should that be? We are never unwell, and yet here she grinds her teeth against illness. Witch of the mountain, take her away; see to her needs."

I volunteered a tincture of chamomile, passion flower, and lavender before she was borne away with little protest and I could devote my attention to the one who commanded it.

"How curiously fragile she is," the Sun dismissed the girl. "Come, Andersen Sanders, we have work that must be done and wish for you to see it."

Delicate fingers curled around my arm, and the warmth of them spread through me, banishing the frigid mountain air. She took me through a system of caverns, each bigger than the last and embellished by dripstones until they were the equal of any cathedral of Byzantium. Like the light, sounds echoed and splintered among those caverns; now I heard the wind rushing through leafy trees, and then a creaking like ship's timber straining against the waves, coming from any direction and none. When I thought the noise could grow no louder, the Sun drew me through a crack in the wall of a cave in size about that of the west wing of Kobenhaven, and into another even bigger – but its size was not the most wondrous thing about it.

It was open at one end to the black maw of the night, and adorned again with stony curlicues grown from ceiling and floor, and upon every surface whether vertical or horizontal or any plane between, nested winged lizards sprung from the pages of our story books into this world crumbling before my eyes. I could not move; how could Böðvarr Bjarki find the strength and mind to slay even one. There was constant movement amongst them so that a colour would flash here, teeth the length of my arm there, a slit-pupiled eye gleam, a barbed tail lash lazily to and fro; and the sound of claws against rock, bones flexing, wings like living canvas snapping out and furled once more. With thick dread, I reached out my hand to a dragon. It sniffed the intruder then rubbed its ear vigourously against it. Its hide was like the pebbled bottom of a creek beneath one's feet, and its ear stiff but flexible as a bat's wing. The Sun smiled at me, indulgent and amused.

"We have already sent the Aftenstjernen; its light is the brightest and would have burnt your eyes from your skull. But there you see the belt of Orion," she pointed to three brown, scaly dragons leashed together with chains silvery-fine as stardust, "and the seven sisters Plejaderne." They were delicate creatures of hot-blue hue and wings as large as sails.

Wandering among them, the largest perhaps lifted an eyelid but closed it again so far below their notice was I, while the littlest watched me suspiciously and followed close behind, ducking and darting around dripstone perches and other dragons alike. I turned and saw the Sun deliver a great brass lantern (one of many upon many strewn haphzaardly, the only glittering hoard to be found in this nest) into the waiting claws of a speciman larger than a carriage. From her breast, her heart, she drew a silver flame and with it lit the lantern. In a rush of wind that pulled the breath from my lungs, the dragon leapt into the air and sailed out into the night through the open end of the cavern. It settled into a place I recognised and began its slow course circumnavigating the heavens.

"You must have a messenger, so that you may write of all you have seen to Valdmar Hesse-Kassel," the Sun's voice recalled me. She moved to a – litter, perhaps? – of small red-russet lizards and drew one out by the scruff of its neck and presented it to me.

Look up and you will see the eye of the Little Fox is missing from the sky tonight – its lantern light rests next to me as I write, and its bearer sits upon your shoulder as you read. Tonight I watched as Betelgeuse was kindled and set free. There are too many wonders in this world, Vald, and I believe most never know of them because man was not made to see them. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too high to grasp, too great to understand. I want to be home.

Forgive me, I am tired and the light makes my eyes ache.

Remember to send me your father's command.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>DRAGONS! Obviously, these were only teaser DRAGONS but do not think I have forgotten, my dear.<em>

_And purely because I'm a literary geek. Of the cathedral of Byzantium (latterly Constantinople, latterly Istanbul), emissaries of Prince Vladimar of Kiev in the tenth century had this to say, _

"_We only know that God dwells there among men and that their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. We did not know whether we were in heaven or earth. We cannot forget such beauty"._

_See also 'Sailing to Byzantium' by W.B Yeats, and _Sailing to Sarantium_ by Guy Gavriel Kay._


	9. Sun II

To Vald.

From Anders.

Thank your father most sincerely on my behalf - and ask if he has thought through the contradiction of reprimanding my behaviour by sending me to attend not one but three balls, even if they are Tyks balls. Or rather don't, as I'll on to the capital as soon as I may but you'll be begging further leniency for me yet, _pis det_.

You know that trick females have of being so deliberately charming that one feels positively churlish for even thinking of interrupting them with serious matters? They learnt it at the feet of my lady the Sun. She is the sunlight behind window panes on a summer's afternoon that tempts boys from their lessons and men from their ledgers. But talking with her is not a chore, the opposite in fact. One forgets, she appears so young, that she was present at the birth of the world and she remembers everything – the _forfærdeligt_ poetry I gave you for your eleventh birthday just as well as each dragon that crawled upon the earth before the first human drew breath. When times are easier, I might come back here and become a nocturnal creature, spending my nights with her as long as she allows it. Her eyes are pure gold, warm as only the purest gold can be, and the weight of her gaze is kind and comforting, except for when it sears. Mentioning the slippers I felt obliged to travel so far out of my way to attain brought about such a change.

"Are you so anxious to leave us, Andersen Sanders?" she asked, touching delicate fingers to my wrist. "You seemed most flattered when my brother claimed you as his own. What have we done to make you mislike us?" A question fraught with peril, _naturallement_ I did my best not to answer.

"The Moon led me to believe you could not watch his comings and goings within his lake."

The light that danced across her skin brightened until I had to look away. A golden image of her was burnt into the inside of my eyelids and faded to ruby. Unlike the Moon, I remember precisely what she says to me – she wishes to be remembered. Her voice when it sounded was determinedly pleasant. "The royal pup (_Jeg sværger_, Vald, her exact words) read your letter in the council chambers as the sun streamed through the stained-glass window of St Drogo behind him. (I'm flattered, but perhaps you'd serve the Danmarches better if you paid attention?) Our brother is strangely temperamental when a mood is upon him and needs true things not reflections. But he thought our stars an imposition upon his sovereignty and now in childish spite he hides himself."

"Forgive me, my lady, the Moon struck me as many things but not childish."

"Sweet creature, so it would seem to you." She laced her fingers with mine, the warmth of it winding up my arm. "Our dragons are guards to watch over the Moon when I cannot, carrying the love of our heart, yet he disdains our gift from ignorance, and in mindless retaliation dares trespass in my realm? These are not the rational actions of an adult."

Hoping to distract, or not distract, _divert_ her perfect mind to less sensitive ground, I asked a question which had been sitting quietly in the back of my head waiting its turn since the Schmuddeligen Koff. "My lady, have you heard tell or seen a press, I know not what kind, possibly in possession of the Baron of Dieberei?" Uselessly vague, but so had been the conversation I overheard – I would have paid even less attention if not for the disconcerting image of the Baron possibly pressing flowers.

"Andersen Sanders, you know as well as we that there are some things not discussed in the light of day," the Sun chided, her voice more lovely and more temperate. "Ask another question and our answer shall be our gift to you – our brother's was a very paltry thing not for you at all and we must redress this imbalance. Shall it be enlightenment? Would you like to see the shades of grey that colour any lie told to you?"

As often as I know I have complained to you how useful such a gift would be, faced with the reality of such a thing my answer couldn't be anything but "_Nej_. There are things I do not want to know the truth of."

She embraced me then, enveloped and held me, her body soft against mine. "The truth you fear would not be true for longer than the space of a moment; your father adores you and it has been many years."

"The space of a moment would break my heart."

Her hand again upon my cheek. "Another gift then, it is simple. Do you wish to know the secret of immortality?"

"And watch all I love crumble with age? I suppose every gift must have its price."

"No, not every gift."

"Then let my gift be priceless. A kiss."

My words cast a pall of – something indefinable but akin to sorrow and pity and majesty, all of these – over her as she stood within my arms. "Such a cost is beyond your reckoning. We love you very well, Andersen Sanders, but to take you over any other would lessen our perfection. We love all things upon the earth freely and with equal ardour, so it must remain."

Disappointed, I thought, there is a lack of logic here. Are there not draughts that come when the Sun beats mercilessly at the earth, and men quail at her anger?

"We do not control the winds nor where they should push the clouds so rain may fall. The love of our heart, the light from our very heart, shines on all; we can only weep with the weeping, despair with the despairing."

Still I was not satisfied, "What then of winter, when the days grow short and bitter, and many may die of the cold? Why hide yourself away and offer only weak consolation for half the year? Where is your love then, when it is needed most?"

Tears welled from her eyes and clung to her cheeks like dew upon a golden rose petal. "It is not we who abandon the world, Andersen Sanders, but the world which abandons us. Is that what Man thinks, that we are so fickle? Oh, that you creatures could see beyond the horizon of your tiny lives!"

"Forgive me," I begged, brushing away tears that burned with unsteady fingers, coming within a hairsbreadth of taking the impossible. And so I changed course for easier waters, tacking as easily as I would in your boat if only you'd ever let me borrow it.

Shall that content you, my lord? Have I fulfilled your desire for a portrait of the Sun? _Tu voir_, I have recovered my spirits perfectly from recent lowness, and as for a grudge (_alors_, such a dreadfully Saxon word, I'm embarrassed for you) nothing could be further from the truth. When I was in a position of having to exchange words with her, I was a paragon of courtesy that my mother would have been proud to witness.

Assure your father I'm to the capital as soon as I may. Keep well.

* * *

><p><em>You guys! I have fanart! It is the most exciting thing. I am seriously considering learning how to draw so I can pass it on to someone else. I have put the link on my profile, or rather I'm about to try and we'll see how helpful fanfiction is feeling today. Thank you, Mertle!<em>

_Also, I rushed to piece this chapter together because (drum roll) I'm going to Athens for the next three weeks. I've uploaded the unfinished next chapter so I can work on it but Greek sunshine on the one hand, wrangling with words 'til my eyes want to fall out on the other – I think we know which is going to win. In any case, I'll be largely internet-incommunicado, you know, if someone had a sudden desire to chat to me._


	10. Sun III

_So I thought I would get no work done but it turns out hour and a quarter delays in San Francisco do wonders for my productivity. Unfortunately not so much for the guy sitting next to me who had an international connection to catch. Also, I did not once have to suffer the ignominy of a full body scan - perversely I'm disappointed, I had been practising my scathing looks specially._

* * *

><p>To Vald.<p>

From Anders.

_Gå drikke en tønde af bjørnens pis_, Vald, I did not call you 'my lord', only A.S. would do that. Also, you might like to think upon the possibility that the constant companionship with your love-struck fiancée is emasculating you if you are provided with a story of the Sun in her glory and the mysteries of our world but most of your reply is taken up with worrying my rapport with Delfin. I had legitimate reasons, but to set your mind at rest I shall tell you the story of this afternoon.

It happened that I found myself in the same place as Delfin - Sonneschlafen is such a warren it is not so easily accomplished, particularly if one is avoiding such an accomplishment. I turned immediately but she stopped me with a hand outstretched and an enquiry about my accquaintance with the Sun the previous day. Choosing the least personal topic to disuade continuing conversation, I told her briefly that the Sun did not know what type of press had gotten Dieberei so excited.

The girl blinked slowly at me, wordlessly condemning any pretensions I had to intelligence. "Apart from you yourself, who can chitter as a dolphin about any thing, man becomes excited about only one thing that does not makes sense, the ridiculous money. Your pieces of metal are stupid but if you press to make them that is what it is."

"If our customs so offend you, you need only say the word and you shall be returned home. I would hate to think I am keeping you against my will."

"And what would I do with these legs?"

"I do not know; it is quite beyond my realm of experience, and my advice is of very little value to you even when I'm familiar with the circumstance."

"I do not want to leave you, this world." The encompassing gesture she made was as pretty and elegant as always.

"I must have misunderstood, my apologies. Allow me to retire my vexatious presence."

"Stop!" she commanded, her hands jerking upwards abruptly.

"I fear to point out that I am stationary at present, _mademoiselle_."

"No, stop. I want you to not be as you are."

"Forgive me," I begged, all politeness, "I don't understand."

"The way you are speaking to me."

"What of it? Have I been discourteous?"

"Yes, no – you know what you are doing!"

"As you say; a gentleman would never argue with a lady. If you'll excuse me."

"_Kan du svømme bak en tisser fisk_! I want you to stop being angry with me."

I observed the slight flush along her cheekbones, the light like dragon-fire within her eyes; unusual in the face of her impassiveness.

"You care," I realised.

"Yes. I want to know how do I make you stop being angry with me. I know it can be done for you would be angry with the prince and then you would not be. Was it because he is the prince or because he knows some secret that I do not?"

Well, Vald, what would be your answer? What is it that makes me love you through all your idiocy? No matter, I knew mine.

"My lord is blessed with many graces, not least among them the capacity to apologise when it is warranted. Beg one's pardon? Say he's sorry?" I added when my words obviously struck no chord.

"'Pardon' and 'sorry' are words you say before you tell me you are at fault but mean that you think I was," she said in her precise way.

I don't think I'm merely flattering myself when I say I am a person who chooses his words with more care – certainly more artistry – than most. But I wonder how careful any of us truly are with those parts of humanity that are engraved upon our souls – love, justice, mercy, forgiveness? What does it say about the Danmarchan court that Delfin went a year without hearing someone explain the concept?

"To say sorry," I tried to articulate, "is to feel regret, to wish that you had not done some action which caused another harm, and that you will try not to do so again. Or else, then again, that you recognise someone else is hurting and you wish you could help."

She frowned. "Those are just words; they can be said to mean many things, and stop meaning what they meant before the echo dies away. What is done is better."

"What would a fish do?"

"If my father was displeased by my behaving, he would tell me to stop and I would stop, unless I did not want to, and he would not think of it again unless he heard or saw my misbehaving once more."

"How would he know that you had stopped?"

"Because I would not be doing it."

"But what if a similar situation had not arisen, if there was no opportunity to show that you had stopped? Reading minds is not one of my talents; I thought you didn't care."

"I _do_ care."

"And I care too if you should come to any harm. While you're under my protection I _need_ to keep you safe.

"I was safe. You were there."

The thought of Annah ambushed me and left my heart beating weakly, the smell of the river lingering. "I'm not perfect, I cannot save everyone."

"One day you will tell me that sad thought. But today I think you should be happy so I shall try the apology. I apologise for causing you to be anxious and that your eye suffered for it when I did not follow your instructions – if you explain them better in future why you are giving them, I will listen better and then do what I will do."

I raised a single eyebrow. "In the interest of furthering your education, Angel Feet, you should know that as apologies go that was rather at the lower end. Generally, they are a little more all-encompassing and don't include caveats criticising whoever's pardon is being begged."

Her eyes grew very innocent and opaque. "It was my very first try; I shall improve."

I touched the tips of my fingers to her cheek. "I'm glad we're to be friends again. Vald wrote me that I never could hold a grudge for it depresses me." And taking her hand, "Come, have you seen the dragons?"

"Wait. Is there also a word to mean that I am happy that I have my tongue and know that I would not have received such a gift if not for you? What will I say?"

"Thank you. Or praise be to Andersen Sanders, blessings and honour, and glory and power." Don't roll your eyes, I made her smile.

"Thank you, Anders."

"Think nothing of it."

She shook her head. "When I think of it, I cannot think of nothing."

"That's just what is said ... and I shall have to take more care not to be merely a parrot. You hear everything with new ears, the same as you see. Thank you in return for the coin press; the more I think on it, the more sense it makes of the conversation I overheard. So Dieberei is cheating his own country - it is useful knowledge to have of someone, and we wouldn't if not for your beautiful eyes. Beautiful because they're clear-sighted. I mean perceptive. I mean to say you are very good at looking. At things."

_H__é__las_, Vald, what has but a month trekking through the wilds of Tyksland done to my beautiful tongue? Have you ever heard of a compliment more wretchedly given?

Our deep and meaningful talk ended there but there was one more thing for which I could have thanked her except that I knew she would not understand if I tried. I was reminded that we humans too are wondrous. While we must be imperfect (though naturally I to a lesser extent than you), we are made in God's image and when we reflect that we are as wonderful as any dragon-borne star.

There. Have I convinced you now my spirits have recovered? I promise you truly, faithfully they have.

My love to you.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>Batter up, O Captain, my Captain.<em>


	11. Sun IV

_You may want to check the opening to Chapter 9: Sun II. I've added some words because yet again I chronically underexplained what was happening re: the king's commanding Anders to the capital, which lead me to a wee mite of trouble in this letter._

* * *

><p>To Vald.<p>

From Anders.

To be sure I did not count the number of words with which I regaled you but I have a memory of several crossed sheets, and I am sure such largesse – even discounting the deeply improving philosophical bent of the content – deserves more in return than a few morose lines. Did I recover my temper only to sour yours. Will you tell me what ails you, Vald?

I feel it only fair to warn you that I will continue to tax you daily on the matter even though we depart for Tyks' capital tomorrow morning. And how will you achieve such a feat, Anders? you ask. Well, by placing one foot in front of another, one begins a process called 'walking'.

This is the problem when you are sullen, Vald: I never know whether I want to cheer or annoy you out of _ton cafard_ and so fall somewhere directly in between.

To whit, and no more of my nonsense, the Sun and I agreed upon a present of my very own, and with that piece of unfinished business done and three days spent, we are allowed again to leave. _Mais attendez, _my present? I imagine it is now sitting on your right shoulder. I am the proud caretaker of the eye of the Little Fox, and have named it Renard in the Fransk fashion.

I did feel bound to ask what might be the price of such a gift. The Sun paused a moment to consider the deep, quiet twilight that enclosed the mountain, so antithetical to its dazzling heart, and replied that she could not see the future, only remember the past. "Men are curious creatures when they read the world around them – a star lost from the sky could be an omen of good or ill. We know that when once a noble wanderer went its way there was great bloodshed and loss in the Cradle of the World to appease the gods they thought were withdrawing favour from them. Who can say what men will do?"

At which Delfin, seated on the knee of the witch of the mountain bidding it farewell, muttered something to the effect that that was a stupid thing to say because if bad things happen I will say it is because of me and try to fix it. Much has been made of what some would call my arrogance (that I prefer to think of as a considered sense of self-worth), but at least I have never had the _stål testiklerne_ to call a celestial body, one of the givers of life on Earth, stupid.

However, I cannot find it in myself to chide her beyond the scope of these pages for she has suffered a grave disappointment by my hand. The Sun had made glass slippers such as the Moon said she might, but at the request of the witch of the woods (yet another one) and they, the slippers, reside now with her.

Vald, with less than a week to reach Tyksmøde before the Old Eagle's balls then there is no _time_ to trek to the North Woods and back. There's nothing I can do. My first loyalty is to you and the country as it always will be, as it should be. I can promise that we will go north once my work for your father is done but how far will days and weeks stretch out when any weight upon her feet is an agony?

It would be easier if Delfin would shout and cry and do anything other than blink at me slowly and take my hand to tug me along behind as she goes in search of the dragonlings (if that is what one calls their young) whose lanterns are so small they cannot yet be seen by the naked eye. When I try to apologise, she tips her head to one side as if she cannot understand when we had that conversation _only yesterday_. And she _will_ wander about every hour of the day with no thought to self-preservation – and that the soles of her feet remain supple and unmarked is entirely beside the point. She told me how every step feels, I _remember_.

Almost I besmirched my honour and considered letting Angel Feet succumb to debilitating seasickness once more so she would be a little more inclined towards staying off her feet, however the lessons hammered into me as a child won out.

"Here," I said, handing her the fat yellow heart of a chamomile flower with wonderful graciousness. "My best guess is if you boil it into something drinkable then it will help with the dizziness. When we are down the mountain where it's warmer, we'll search out passion flowers for the nausea."

She looked at me with mild scepticism.

"If you do not trust the words of the witch of the flowers, I do not blame you; it's not my natural inclination either."

"When did the witch of the flowers come and why did you not tell me? When were you speaking to her?"

"Our meeting in her field was the one instance in which I have been forced to endure the chatter of that sycophant, thank God. You should count yourself lucky that you are not burdened with remembering it."

"You were not listening when she talked of her flowers, you were walking all stiff and stupid."

"That is not true and anyway beside the point. I had a good memory as a child and trained it to be better. Take this," I flourished the broken flower beneath her nose, then thought better of it. "No. I will deal with it, you will stay sitting right here."

"You're an idiot," she replied succinctly.

Fortunately, I was able to leave her in the care of the witch of the mountain. The witch still makes my skin creep but Delfin seems to like it well enough and they find something to talk about.

Commend me to your father and beg apologies for the delay, give my best wishes to your lady love, and if you could point out to my father that it is hardly my fault that the Sun wanted to keep me temporarily, he raised a very charming son and I am he who is forced to bear the consequences of that folly.

Keep yourself well and happy. Shall I tell you a joke?

* * *

><p><em>I want to thank everyone for so very nicely <em>not_ asking me how it is that Anders remembers whole conversations at a time. I did have it all sorted out just in case, but since Vald already knows there's no reason for Anders to spell it out in a letter to him. That is the single biggest problem with the epistolary style, for those of you playing at home._

_You know I can't grab your ghost chips, Captain. (I forgot the ever so witty thing I was going to say so that has not much to do with anything, but since you're here you might as well youtube it and gain a further insight into our culture.)_


	12. Deliverance

To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.

From Andersen Sanders, by the grace of God delivered from the wilderness unto civilisation.

My lord, I shall have to defer my formal greetings to a later paragraph for I am simply too rapturous over my survival to think of such things.

Never again, my lord. I care not even if your honoured guest has come from the great undiscovered Southern Continents and has only one day left in this world to view the wonders of Northern nature, I shall never again set foot in a cultivated field let alone the barren hinterland of a mountain range. _Three days._ For three days were our horses turned about, and so lost were we that I feared we might recourse to eating one of the beasts with only my cherry-twist bicorne to fuel a desperate fire.

No more, and never again. I am taking Delfin to view the marvels of Tyksmøde; signposts, fireplaces, servants, and all the other wonders that God gave man the good sense to surround himself with. My mind is firmly made up and cannot be changed. If you could see the state of my Spansk-tooled boots, my lord: the _horror_.

We alighted briefly at the same tavern where I conversed with Baron Dieberei, for even a Tyks mauling my boots is better than leaving them for another hour in a wretched poverty of attention. I suppose you must have already heard the news which I was acquainted with there; three balls to be held in honour of the Crown Prince of Tyksland and in the hope that he might find a wife.

It occurs to me, as rather more than my fair share of brilliant ideas have a habit of doing, that if your father my liege sent a royal request by the fastest of the court's courier, it would take only two days to travel from Kobenhaven to Tyksmøde, and I might be welcomed to the city with the so inspiring and fortifying sight of ball invitations with my name engraved upon them. Or is the fashion for embossing now? _C'est impossiblement tragique_, I do not know: I am ruined, the wilderness has _ruined _me. I long for the strains of a waltz lifted over the hum of polite repartee. I pine for soft and scented woman in rich silk gowns. I am ravished with desire for food that is treated as an art, not slapped together in only an hour. I pray you, my lord, if you have the slightest piece of affection for me in your heart, do not deny me in this. _Chandeliers_, my lord.

I feel myself sufficiently recovered to do my proper duty now. Greetings, my lord, and may all that is good and right in the world fall upon you and your loved one, your house and your chattel, your dogs and your cattle. May your chandeliers be ever clean and scintillating, and the chains which hold them above the heads of your guests ever strong and true. It pains me to be so far from your presence and decorative light fixtures, but I ever trust that my letters will find you in good health now and evermore.

Please pass on my regards to whomever I knew that yet lives. I feel sure that Delfin must have lead us into a faeries' dance and though to us it seemed only three (interminable, endless) days had passed, in the real world an hundred years had flown by. The balls for Prince Florian may not even be for the Florian I knew; the Tyks name every other one of their princes Florian, don't they? Oh Lord, what if I am wearing clothes a century out-of-mode? I must find someone knowledgeable in these matters at once; the peasants at the Schmuddeligen Koff can hardly be trusted.

I am ever your obedient, _et cetera_.

* * *

><p><em>Sweet as, bro. <em>

_And by 'bro' I mean 'friend'. _

_And by 'friend' I mean particularly the Captain, but other people with whom I am friendly may also wish to feel they have been informed that an unspecified something is as sweet as another thing which is likewise unspecified. Boom, you've just been Kiwi'd._


	13. Reassurance

To Vald.

From Anders.

I can think of three reasons why Brigitta would be looking through your private correspondence. One, your delicately-bred convent girl has managed to deceive us all and is in fact a foreign spy gross with deviousness and guile. Two, she has heard the old rumours and is looking for love letters. Three, she is a girl stupidly in love and wishing to know her beloved better. I say this as your friend, Vald, you are not terribly ugly-looking nor lacking in character and that can as intimidating as it is enchanting to the females of our species.

I presume to pontificate with a great deal of authority on the subject because for all Annah decided when she was seven that she would marry you, she never knew what to think of you. That of course was entirely your fault for rising like some mythical water creature dripping from the river to introduce yourself to two children all innocently out for a walk and minding their own business. As first impressions go it was certainly dramatic, though I don't believe she ever forgave you for ruining her dragonfly dress and sky blue shoes.

It is because you are something like the sea, this fascination you hold. Wait, hear me out, Lord Non-Believer. Your whole family take too much after the sea-faring echelon of our fair nation, all salty and strident and willing to immerse yourselves into the nearest body of water. (I use 'water' in the metaphorical sense – 'sea of troubles', and so on – as well as the physical, _pas de cours_.) However, the first thing one needs to know about HRH Valdmar IV is that he never demures from a challenge: not content to be upon the sea, _niet_, he must _be _it. Strong, forceful, constant but with a vicious temper, and you know when you lie back in the sea and the water bouys you up? You can be a safe harbour also. All a little bit foreign and fascinating to the Sanders of the good solid earth – except the black sheep who took after his mother, but for my hair and eyes, I suppose.

Now, to meet Brigitta, you not only drenched yourself but half-drowned yourself as well (which, it must be repeated, would not have happened if I were allowed to captain your boat for I would not have sailed it straight into a storm). In her eyes, you are part pathetic – surviving vicious storms and delivered into her tender care to nurse back to life – and part romantic – transformed from sailor to prince with a white horse ready to whisk her away from her dreary convent – but all, I assure you, _all_, in every part and particular, hero. A hero is all very well in a girlish daydream, but when it comes down to it, what does one say to a knight in shining armour in the everyday, really?

Therefore and thusly, what was that terrible word you had the temerity to force me to read in a previous letter? Ah yes, 'slack' (ghastly thing): cut and deliver to your darling fiancée a piece of it, _parakalo._

My jokes are hilarious and you would be well served to be allowed to read one, but that opportunity is lost, the ship sailed, the drunk ousted from the bar, the turnip pulled from the ground, _et cetera_.

.o.

_Postscript._ It would be tidier if I'd remembered to slide this elegantly into the paragraphs above, but with my dragon now speeding back and forth, I'd spend all my days and nights writing to you instead of living if I wasn't careful – so in the name of care I shall not rewrite the entire letter, but postscript instead.

That first day by the river, Annah decide that you were much too dangerous even if you were a prince because – oh so _jævla_ ironically – she thought you would get me drowned. She warned me away from you that day which was perhaps the greatest good deed she ever did me, because there's nothing to make a boy do the exact opposite than his little sister giving him orders.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>Heh, Captain, how obvious is it that I wrote the bulk this while you and She-Who-Climbs-Trees were here? 'Pologies for the ridiculous wait, ma cherie, and now go to. <em>


	14. The king of the sea

Vald, _helvede_, you will think your very obedient

Anders has lost his wits.

I was quizzing Delfin today about courtship in the fathoms below, for one should never pass on the opportunity to expand one's repertoire, and whether there was a special be-finned man in her life who now pines in her absence, when she positively glared at me and muttered that I should not encourage gossip.

"The word 'gossip' implies the existence of someone to whom the information can be passed on," said I. And indicating our surroundings, "We have not passed a single confidable person in more than an hour."

"Aslong as there are flowers on every side, the witch will hear your foolishness."

Vald, I am so absolutely dense. The witch of the flowers _said_ she "had heard from the flowers of Bier". I am still cursing myself for not figuring it out sooner, for the ignominy of having the obvious pointed out to me. The witch of the flowers is of _all_ the flowers, not just the one in the meadow where we encountered her corporeal form. I must admit, it is not entirely a comfortable thought – do you recall, Vald, if anything blooms near our swimming hole? And what of the flowers growing in the box outside the windows of my rooms?

Delfin is more inured to it because her father was the same. "He is the king of the sea: anywhere the sea is there he has eyes and ears. It is why to think I went to the surface, and how I saw the prince."

"Your father could hear thoughts?"

"No. But still I wanted out from the crushing of his presence to think thoughts he would not like."

A thought occurred to me, "The king of how much of the sea are we talking about?"

"All the sea."

"_All_ of the sea?"

"Yes." Again the blank face I love so well.

"That's logistically impossible."

"It is not like – I cannot tell you what it is like without disgusting you."

A foolish misstep on her part; now I was intrigued.

"The king of the sea is spawned in an hundred eggs at the same time; ninety-nine males and one female to hatch the next kings. We are not like humans with your souls and your ... differences. My father is the king of the sea and is the same as eighty-two others who are the king of the sea."

"But you're different." She seemed nonplussed by the clear conclusion to be drawn from her words. "There are not merfolk leaping out of the sea every other day to see what they might see. You're different."

"Don't imagine me to be something I am not."

"Such as what?"

Casting about tree-bristled gully through which we rode for inspiration, she finally landed upon, "Special."

I leaned over and patted her hand in a friendly way. "There will come a day when you tire of insulting my intelligence and what a splendid day that will be."

Can you imagine it, Vald? If we could convince a witch to side with the Danmarches? Ears and eyes to aid and abet us wherever there are flowers or lake or mountains. _For helvede, _or woods – why does the girl have to be so _forpulede_ opaque? Why not just _say_ the witch of the woods can be in any forest found on the way? I will murder her in her sleep yet, Vald, and not shed a tear. However, my further trials and tribulations with Angel Feet not withstanding, I shall look into it. It would make us great.

* * *

><p><em>My very dear readers, I have noticed that some writers find it needful to apologise when their chapters get below a certain length - I have no such intention for I prefer chapter under a thousand words - but I would like to have it entered on the public record that I am aware these letters are getting shorter. The simple reason for that is Anders is writing more frequently, and of more everyday things of interest, because of the dragon. It's like a person who has written letters all his life suddenly having access to email - only a matter of time before he devolves to twitter and status updates. I'm just kidding . . . or am I?<em>

_Ah, Captain, my nemesis, my friend, how I am enjoying this turn of events. Also, if the literary tour had spanned out to the wider environs of the City, the gully they're riding through would have been on it._


	15. A Situation

Vald,

_For fanden da også_, you call that a _situation_? I call it a _kibaszott_ _nightmare_. And don't you tell me when to care or not, I will _al naibii de_ decide for my _porra_ self. I see _no_ evidence of the country _refraining_ from imploding when I'm not _vitun_ there to stop it.

How the _kneppe _can there be no food? I rode through the Danmarches no more than a month ago and every last _putain _inch of it was covered in fields. Every day I woke up there were fields and went to sleep there were fields and all the time in between there were _forpulede_ _fields_. What the _souložit_ are farmers growing in them if not food? I may be the despair of my forefathers but there is some _merda _I know, and what I _caralho_ know is that there is food enough to feed _ten times_ the _kuradi_ population of the_ vitun_ Danmarches _somewhere_, so where the _pokol_ is it?

And what the _foda_ happened to _foda_ fealty? That's what I want to know. It is our _kurva_ _duty_ to serve for the betterment of all so what the _fasz_ where those landholder's doing selling the _jebeni_ food they _knew_ was to be tithed? Did they think someone else would _putain_ pick up their _kibaszott _end? _Jeg vil sparke en andens skide røv._

* * *

><p>You can answer whichever <em>al naibii de<em> part you want to first, Vald. Far be it from me to _vitun_ dictate to you. There has to be _something _I can do. I _foda_ _refuse_ to prance about at Floriflöhchen's _saft-und kraftlos_ ball when I could be doing something useful. And this had better not end, this had better _putain_ not end, with a _forpulede_ order to ask for a quiet word with the king because I won't do it, I _will not_ do it. Your father had better work it the _kneppe_ out because it will be a cold day in hell and I will _spise min æsel er behårede_ _testikler _before I beg food from the _piksugen _Old Eagle.

(Don't think for one moment that I am anything less than still furious, but would you write down the time you send your reply. I want to know how fast is my Renard.)

* * *

><p>So tell your father to give me new orders. What the <em>fasz<em> use it is being friends with a_ caralho_ royal heir if you can't even do _that_? _Dreck_, no, I don't mean that but _please_ don't let them do that to me. I'll figure something out, I'll find a way, you know I can – just get them to delay the order for a week, that's all, so I don't have to disobey a direct command. Please, Vald.

2 o'clock.

* * *

><p>Thank you. Of course I'll save the day, it's what I do – my calling in life, if you will – and no detractors, however dear to my heart, will turn me from my chosen course. Do you know that you practically quoted each other word for word? It amazes me that you and Delfin didn't realise you were made for one another, marry and have lots of censorious little babies all gagging to inform me, entirely unneedfully mind, that the world will function splendidly without my taking responsibility for it. I am not burning myself out; I'm just doing what's needed.<p>

(Hour there and back, near enough. How many furloughs is that? We're about three miles from Stuttgart.)

* * *

><p>Yes, Annah has arisen in our conversations. There is a great deal of road in this country and talking keeps me from falling off my horse to relieve the tedium. What difference does it make?<p>

(_Souložit_, that's insane. I'm glad it's on our side.)

* * *

><p>It is not so amazing as all that if I did. While it's not a story I bring out to amuse people at parties neither is it a secret. She <em>asked<em> and what was I supposed to do? Deny my sister's existence and kill her a second time?

Keep the poor creature with you; feed and rest him for the night, he's exhausted. Besides I know what reply you'll send already and you're wrong. I _could_ have saved her.

* * *

><p><em>So not quite twitter-length, but I don't think Anders could actually say anything in only 140 characters. Now, if you skip back and look again at chapter twelve, you'll notice that I've changed the Tyks prince's name - Humperdinck was a terrible name, and as I said in a number of review replies, I should never be allowed to name characters while under the influence of Andersen Sanders at his most ridiculous. Floriflöhchen is a nick name that roughly translates as 'little Flori flea'. Did I have something else to say? Only that there's about ten different languages in this chapter, I didn't actually count, and I blame all inaccuracies on Google translate.<em>

_I'm still behind, aren't I, Captain? Drat._


	16. Woods

To Vald.

From Anders.

The inn I remembered between Stuttgart and Stadtrand (the one with the painting of Florian the VII or XIX looking like the prettiest princess in his christening gown) has closed, so in the absence of anything better we decided to take the shelter of a small copse of trees for the night. As the light drained out of the world and the Sun miles away set down her fine foot at the threshold of Sonneschlafen's caverns, shadows grew impossibly solid, and there was the sound of running feet, snapping twigs, cracking branches, and the wind soughing through the corridors of a great forest.

A great scaly claw descended beside me, no more than two feet away, planting itself. The toes flexed, kneading the dirt and mouldering leaf mulch with their nails. Legs towered over me like trees – lutescent, dirt ingrained in the furrowed skin – they were chicken legs, Vald, and should have been absurd but were more like the pure nightmares you can only have as a child. The legs shuddered then bent, kneeling to deliver a cottage to the forest floor. It was old and crooked, laced with moss, and had one small door which was opening.

A little, old woman sidled out with the help of a broom, gnarled as a tree root and twice as stumpy. She looked at us down a long, long nose and nodded.

"Not much of a princess. Knew he wasn't the prince. No warmth in her blood. Will need a fire then. Go get wood you two," and with that the witch of the woods limped back into her fowl-legged hut and shut the door behind her.

Angel Feet wandered off into the wood which had grown old and vast with the arrival of its witch, picking up sticks and babbling to herself. When I suggested she sit and I could gather wood, she ignored me and repeated each word succinctly, "Will. Need. A. Fire. Then. Go. Get. Wood. Go ... Get ... Wood."

"What are you doing?" I asked as her smile grew in grand discovery. "As instructions go, they were hardly the most complex."

"This is why humans speak like this. It is much easier; the air doesn't dry out my throat. I like this very much." She sounded strange and not like herself.

"I like it better when you sing."

Rolling her eyes, "Make up your mind – haven't you caused me enough pain?"

I forget – it shames me but I forget sometimes that I enjoyed watching her dance when she could not protest, not even cry out.

"No, please." My hand was caught in hers. "I didn't say that – stupid language. I meant to mean that you're an idiot and ... we would say, a pain in the gill?"

"A pain in the neck."

"Yes? I don't want you to be sad."

"I cannot beg your pardon enough times."

"Stop, Anders. I will tell you – you make me say too many secrets of the sea!" As if it were my fault. "When you are noble and a woman grown it is marked by the number of oysters attached to your tail. My grandmother, she would give me eight to wear, when I was old enough. They hurt, a lot, and dragged in the water so I could not dance. It was a relief to come to the surface and move in the air and impossible lightness. I would rather, every day, to be in too terrible pain and graceful, than a lot of pain and clumsy."

"Beauty matters so much to you?"

"How long would I have been staying in the prince's court otherwise?" She waved the question away with an impatient hand. "Ignore my tongue. What is my prize is freedom."

"You can't possibly truly believe you are just the same as any other fish. Freedom is the chief prize of man."

"Then you are not a man."

I should have learnt by now not to be baited by these blunt statements and wait for whatever convoluted explanation is always sure to follow, but honestly, Vald, there is only so much a man can endure. With pointed words and general verbal brilliance, I defended my masculinity which garnered only a slow blink.

"Your parts may be man-like but your prize is not freedom so you must not be. That is what you said."

"I said nothing of the kind and you know it," I complained. "And I like freedom perfectly well; it's a very nice thing to have, I'd miss it if it went on holiday."

"You like it but you _love_ your responsibility. And your prize is the perfection, of others (but you never think they will be) and most of all for you to always be perfect. It is too heavy for you."

I tried to laugh. "You're building up to calling me an idiot, aren't you?"

"When I call you an idiot I mean I like you who you are – so clever you pretend at being stupid – but that you should be lighter."

"_Lighter_? I'm a wholly frivolous person; you could not find a person lighter than I."

"On your surface," she said, "you are light and it is pleasant and many fish enjoy swimming about, but deep and deeper where the pressure will bend your bones and the sun doesn't reach, it is like . . . There are these stone windows on the floor of the sea, and burning water blows out of them like a gale – and that is what your heart is like, boiling with worry and care, for your friend and your country and girls who do nothing but madden you all day. And always around the edges of the vent nibbles the fear that this is the day you won't be perfect enough to help them."

Is it true, Vald? I know we joke a lot, but is that really how people see me? I mean the people that matter.

I'll have to finish this later, I'm being called.

.o.

VAld. Vald, you must forget everything I said about Bier Abbery. Their beer is horse-piss compared to the spirits the witch of the woods can make – you have to come here and try it, Vald. I know it will mean invading a lot more of Tyksland than maybe you'd be comfortable but you have to trust me that it's worth it. Why won't you trust me? You have to come and be here – I wish you were here.

You're a prince too much, you know what I mean? You're like me, I mean you're a prince who can't leave his castle which means you never get to sit around a bonfire in the middle of the woods with a witch and fire whsiky and Delfin leaning against you asking what you're writing. I told her I was writing to you and it was very important busines not for her and she says to say hello and that you're very pretty when your hair is all tousled with sea spray but she doesn't love you anymore. That's not a very approbriate thing to say to a prince but she says its all well because she doesn't love you and prince's need to be appreciated in a friendly way as much as anyone. Vald I am prettier than you, that's what she _said_ because my eyes are like the light than shone down from the world above and made her warm al the way through. But I think you pretty I don't want you to be sad and heavy. You're a prince and your spirits are heavy, like me that's what I meant, I think we're both very heavy and if you were here we'd both get lighter, together, you know?

I sound like the witch of the flowers – I told Delfin I sounded like the witch of the flowers and she said she'd call me Flora. I don't like the name flora, I don't think she should know a word like flora, if she's a mermaid. When did we ever talka bout flora and fawna infront of her, that's what I'd like to know, do you know? Stupid flora.

The trees keep time. I mean, there's music now we're having music, and it began with drumming – the trees drum their limbs together and it's like it's like when there's a storm that goes through a forest but the storm makes sense but not common-time conterpuntal making sense – it's not our thoughts of drums its a rawer beat. The witch of the woods has a box tucked between her knees and bows the strings like hearts would break if they heard the notes, or if they didn't – it makes me remember my sister, she would be old now if she was alive, I don't want to remember but sometimes my days are full of sunlight on the embankmnt and the wide blue river. I have dreamt it a thousand times but not once never once am I strong enough and loud enough and fast enough to save Annah, maybe that is kindder when I wake. And now a flute, a _wood_wind! pixie-light and faintly marshall marital _pis det_ martial.

I love watching Delfin stand up. I tried to stop Delfin from dancing because it hurts her and I would fight the world to keep her from hurt, but she slipped out of my fingers like water. there are flames all around, flickering through her hair, she dances like fire and it wouldn't burn if you reached out, it wouldn't and if i take one beautiful foot to my lap and stroke so lightly, there is no pain only a shiver that flits its way up to kindle her doldrumcalm eyes

you are a fool Vald – a big stupid sanglante ass-about-backwards _fjols._ Because you know she's a princesss nso you can't object to the rank of her birth, and also she can talk now because she has a tongue because the moon gave it to her made out of water so she's not a crippleg, and her manners are still artrocius but she's beautiful, so every point on your list isn't true now. Not a thing is wrong with her anymore that means you can't marry her and she listens and she's so forpulede clever, Vald because she listens and sees – she sees straight right through me, how manuy can say that? and the way her brain _thinks_, no one thinks to think the things she thinks

because you know the reason your an idiot because she doesn't love you. she did but she doesn't now, she _said_ that – she woke up and said i don't love the prince, he's too like the sea and the king, I never did. But you already had your list and chose a convent girl who's the daughter of a trecherus piksuger and didn't ever save your life because _she_ did it all along – she's so verdammt perfect that I don't care taht shes not perfect ,her skin tatses

i cant send this

* * *

><p><em>You know how Google keeps a track of what you search so it can build up a profile on you and suggest pages and advertise to your interests? I sometimes worry about the profile writing this story is creating for me: 'Danish swearing', 'chicken leg on a chicken -drumsticks', 'chicken anatomy', 'medieval Slavic bowed instruments'. That last is because I wrote a lot of the drunk bit at a dress rehearsal for the local medieval society on the back of my music as a lady played the most beautiful, heart-tearing song on a stringed box she held between her knees that I still don't know the name of – I can only commiserate with you that words can't capture that sound.<em>

_Look at that, Captain, bang on schedule if not two days early. I hope you like meeting my brother; I'm very fond of him._


	17. Woods II

To Vald.

From Anders.

The inn I remembered between Stuttgart and Stadtrand (the one with the painting of Florian the VII or XIX looking like the prettiest princess in his christening gown) has closed, so in the absence of anything better we decided to take the shelter of a small copse of trees for the night. I wish to emphasise: a copse of maybe nine or ten trees, easy enough to see the road and hills and dales all the way to the horizon between their spindly trunks, and only described as 'shelter' for narrative convenience. As the light drained out of the world and the Sun miles away set down her fine foot at the threshold of Sonneschlafen's caverns, shadows grew impossibly solid and there was the sound of running feet, snapping twigs, cracking branches, and the wind soughing through the corridors of a great forest.

A great scaly claw descended beside me, no more than two feet away, planting itself. The toes flexed, kneading the dirt and mouldering leaf mulch with their nails. Legs towered over me like trees – lutescent, dirt ingrained in the furrowed skin, a colony of mushrooms growing atop the spur – they were chicken legs, Vald, and should have been absurd but were more like the pure nightmares you can only have as a child. High up above, the hocks melded and fused with planks of wood warped by damp. The legs shuddered then bent, kneeling to deliver a cottage to the forest floor. It was old and crooked, laced with moss, and had one small door which was opening.

A little, old woman sidled out with the help of a silver birch broom, gnarled as a tree root and twice as stumpy. The windows behind her blinked, as she surveyed us. Starlight gleamed off her steel teeth. The end of her very long nose quivered and the drip that hung there fell when she nodded.

"Not much of a princess," the witch grumbled in a thick, mossy accent. "Knew he wasn't the prince. No warmth in her blood. Will need a fire then. Go get wood, you two."

The witch's curt words caused some kind of epiphany in Delfin and she spent our time collecting dry branches and bits of twigs quacking words to herself. It is strange how a thing can grow on a person. When I first heard Angel Feet sing her way through a sentence, I thought it the oddest thing, but now actual speech from her seems so unnatural I had to beg her to stop it.

The wood we collected was kindling for a bonfire the witch of the woods magicked alight, and Delfin and I sat side by side on hastily spread blankets, listening to the strange music of trees, and drinking the witch's best fire whiskey. I want you to forget everything I said about the brew the brothers of Bier Abbey make, the spirits of the woods is the stuff of legends. It really ought to be one of the national treasures of the Danmarches, and I know it would mean invading a lot more of Tyksland than perhaps you are perfectly comfortable with but trust me, it's worth it.

Of course, you might as well run down to the arboretum behind the west wing, you're as likely to find the witch there. Only yesterday morning, the witch of the woods managed to appear to a girl as she was weeping over her mother's grave because it was at the base of a particularly large tree. Invitations to Floriflöhchen's ball, it would appear, have been issued to every household in the area, and this girl had nothing to wear, oh woe is her. The witch of the woods heard, duly appeared, and gave her a dress that shines like the sun, a carriage of pumpkin vines and tumbleweed wheels for her conveyance, and the glass slippers of the Sun.

It happened only yesterday morning; sometimes the world is too unfair. To give the slippers to some wet girl without the fortitude to go to a seamstress when another walks upon phantom glass and is in pain even as her foot rests in its stirrup, how is that even conscionable?

"We say," Delfin says, and makes one of her series of strangled noises. "You cannot comprehend ... the big thing of the reef because you look too hard at the ... little animal, the very small part of it."

I seriously worry for the state of my wits, Vald, for I actually knew what that meant. "I can't see the forest for the trees. I apologise sincerely, but a woman giving away such a treasure to a complete unknown for no reason whatsoever is tree too big for me to overlook."

"Not a woman, no, a _witch_. This is different, yes? You expect the witches to act as a human acts – but they will not. The wet girl was there and the woods were there and so it happened and that is how it is and shall be. There is no fair or anger to feel because that is the way of the witch. And don't think I do not know what you will be saying when I am not there. They would not think to spy for you against the Tyks, no more than my father would send fish away from their nets and into yours. The earth does not hold favourites; it does not reward the good and punish the bad. It simply _is_."

I do not like her philosophy but it seems I shall have to swallow it. We're onwards as soon as I dry this ink, onwards to Tyksmøde and the end of this supernatural quest, which is where we were headed anyway. And to think I wasted perfectly good brooding and angst upon the matter.

* * *

><p><em>Also for those of you playing at home, it's chapters like this and the last one together that makes the epistolary style so much fun.<em>

_The painting of Florian the VII or XIX is one that I saw at the National Portrait Gallery from across two rooms and thought, 'That baby girl looks more like a Queen than any of those old men in ermine robes'. On closer inspection, it was the christening portrait of His Majesty King Charles II – my bad._

_Hope you're having a ball in Nowheresville, Captain._


	18. Tyksmode

_This isn't your Cindy either._

* * *

><p>To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.<p>

From Andersen Sanders, now resident of Tyksmøde, praise be.

Good day to you, my lord. I trust that you and yours are well, good health continues to be showered upon our King, and my father is not driving you all mad as winter confines you indoors. Of course, I jest, my father is no doubt making himself as valuable a member of court as ever graced those hallowed halls. How do the renovations of the chapel get on? I hope they have not been unduly affected by the worst excesses of weather. The lovely Brigitta will of course be a picture of grace and charity.

Delfin and I arrived in Tyksmøde earlier today. The city is bustling with preparations for the prince's fête, bunting everywhere defying the seasonable gloom. It is a cheering to see the populace so bonny and well-fed. Not so cheering is the condition of the Danmarchan state house.

I need not ask you in incredulous tones whether you have _visited _the Tyksmøde house recently for I know perfectly well that you have not, but what of the man who arranged your wedding contract? Surely he had to stay there at some point in the proceedings. Was he _blind_?

I can hardly describe to you how dire the situation is, how absolutely _tragic_. The receiving room – that first glimpse visitors have of the glory of the Danmarches – is a depressing green-pinstriped blue with a border in cream with some type of garland swags and curlicues, oh, my lord, words fail me. And the furniture! Upholstered in green to match, as though we could not take ourselves out to the formal garden if we wanted to be seated upon a grassy sward._ No one _in their right mind wants to be seated upon _grass_.

This will convince you. Delfin, the girl who spends her waking hours looking at things, gave it one hard stare and turned towards the window to look at the view. She has found more joy in true blades of grass than in our lawn-aping caquetoires.

I removed us at once to another premises. I will not say where in case this letter is intercepted by an irate designer. Not that I would not like to deal with the contemptible man, but my eye is only just healed enough to be acceptable in public and I cannot risk another injury before the balls. Indeed, I must add, the only pleasing thing in that disgrace of a room was my invitations sitting upon the table (perfectly good hardwood ruined by a inset of semi-precious bucolic excess; my lord, really, I _ask_ you).

I must end this missive before I thoroughly sink myself in loathing.

* * *

><p><em>I guess sitting in a restaurant in Inverness for six hours abusing my wi-fi privileges was just the motivation I needed, Captain. Update ho!<em>


	19. City

To Vald.

From Anders.

In a few days you will receive a letter from A.S. informing you the Danmarchan house does not live up to our exacting standards and we have removed from it. The truth, _c'est pathetique_, I have grown so used to being myself the thought of performing day and night for whatever spies the Tyks have placed among the servants made me inexpressibly tired. Do you think perhaps I'm growing old? I haven't found a grey hair yet, but it is so hard to tell when one is blonde.

We are making our home with the witch of the city instead. (I am presuming at this point that you are inured as I am to the fact that there is yet another witch and need no breathless revelation of their existence – I wonder if there is a witch of the town, if they make that distinction. The witch of the vegetable patch? I'd ask but I suspect they would think me mocking.) The decision was made, in no small part, in light of what Delfin said about the earth. Nature may not play favourites but I am certain a city must – it is a construct of humans, is it not? And if there is one thing I know I can play it is human nature; two in a metropolis of enemies need all the advantages they can find. 'Enemies' is too bald a description of course, and I have no real reason for it. Everyone here is jubilant with anticipation of the prince choosing his own bride; even the common man pauses in his work to hear of the latest arrival. The man I know has Lavinia Bequem zu Übersehen at five to one. So no reason other than things are not well at home while they are too well here.

Perhaps I really am losing my touch.

The witch of the city has a town house on the corner of Eile and Treiben, where there is a space of pavement taken over by which ever stallholder sets up his wares first, unless one is looking out the corner of one's eye. I had Delfin knock for there is nothing in the world that could induce me to stand in broad daylight on one of the busier intersections of Tyksmøde knocking at thin air.

The person who opened the door was the most indecipherable I had ever seen. Pale skin from the North, wiry curls the colour of sable like an Arabische, eyes green as only the fields of the Kelten could grow but in a tilted setting from the Far East, and a nose that was nothing if not Romeinse. The jaw was mannish but framed pretty feminine lips – and I've still yet to decide upon the proper pronoun for our host. It was a face full of character and frenetic energy, eyes taking in everything and forgetting it the next second.

"I am the witch of the city," the witch declared, supposing, as they all had, that no further introduction or assurance was needed.

"I am Delfin. That is Anders who is trying not to look stupid," Delfin replied. Knocking on thin air was bad enough, I draw the line, or rather draw heavier and further lines, at talking to it as well.

"Princess," the witch murmured, bowing low over her hand then twitching upright again. "I have a present to welcome you to my home. Come."

Our host led us – and again I misuse my words with these witches, there is no 'us'; I was invited in to the witch's houses only by inference when I was not thrown out of it as I entered – through an entrance hall that was decorated in the best of taste (and far better than the Danmarchan House receiving room, A.S. has yet to regale you with his conniptions over it but truth be told the situation is dire) and yet missing some vital factor to make it any more than a very pretty room, and into the front room where tall wide windows gazed upon the face of the city. The other three walls had been covered in shelves, from floor to ceiling, and covering the shelves were glass globes set in gold-wire cups. Within each transparent ball, light and shade and colour swirled; in some lazily, in others angrily, happily, stubbornly, as many different states as there were globes. They glowed, even in the late afternoon sunlight slanting into the room.

The witch crossed to the shelves, perused, and hummed broken snatches of songs I almost recognised. The witch's trailing fingers brushed against an orb and sent it tumbling to the ground where it shattered, its captured light dissolved into the air. I felt a small piece of my heart break in sympathy for something so beautiful was no longer; the witch of the city did not even notice.

"This is my room of dreams," the witch murmured. "I have yours somewhere, but I do not always remember ... I have so much to see to, you'll understand. Now where ... here, no, just wait." The humming took up again, as the witch climbed a ladder that rode along the length of the cases, rattling the globes in their cups. "_Here_, princess."

A dream was lifted out, gently as an egg, and I caught a glimpse of – how can I describe it – of _home_ before Delfin closed her hands over it, shielding it from view.

"Andersen Sanders," the witch said, drawing back my attention, "I believe you have been disappointed by some of my sisters. Witches do not always appreciate the finer things, no? That is the way with them. But I think a man recognised by Lady Sun and Lord Moon should not be overlooked, and I believe I have something here that will tempt even your exacting palate."

The witch's hand reached towards a globe that swirled with joy so fierce it hurt and sang the blue of the river.

I felt myself grow still and cold, so furiously, burningly cold that perhaps my heart stopped and I died for a short while.

The witch – I cannot even tell you what the witch saw or felt or did – but finally, _finally_ the hand dropped away. "I was mistaken, my sincerest apologies; I was very much mistaken. I have no dream for you, Andersen Sanders. How foolish of me."

I said all that was polite and consolatory, and excused myself not stopping even for Delfin's outstretched hand. I had this letter to you to write; it is so hard to find the time these days. Now I must dress for dinner, if you'll excuse me. Best of health to those at home. Try to keep my father from spending too much time outside – his lungs are not what they once were – but for pity's sake don't let him see that's what you're up to. Is there any news of my brothers?

* * *

><p><em>The image of the dreams in glass globes comes from a fic that I can't remember the name of any more – Captain and slipshod, do you remember the story about the girl who spun dreams, and that you two influenced a minstrel into? – I don't know if I even have the image right, it's just the memory I have left from it. So this is really a tragic attempt at due acknowledgement all around then.<em>

_What, Cappy-yo. I feel I should take rather shameless advantage of your computer being broked. And look, now I'm only two behind!_


	20. Näherin's

_In light of my abysmal updating schedule, allow me to remind you of the two things the plot's kind of spinning on at the moment. On the one hand, Del needs the glass slippers that the witch of the woods gave to a girl somewhere in the city, and on the other, too much of the Danmarches' food has been bought from out beneath them when the season's just turning into winter, and the Tyks' lord away back when Anders got his eye blackened was making threats. Oh, right, and there are those three balls to find the Tyks' prince a wife coming up – did someone say totes legit shopping trip? Allons-y!_

* * *

><p>To Vald.<p>

From Anders.

I had a most interesting conversation with the Dread Princess today. We met in the waiting room of Näherin's, I having been left there while the witch of the city took Delfin into the inner sanctum to be fitted for a proper ball gown. Now between Angel Feet's cluelessness and my maleness, the witch of the city realised the need for a definite sex of the female persuasion, so before we left the house, it peeled the skin from its face to reveal a new unquestionably feminine one (but I cannot now think of it as a 'she' or 'he', not after seeing that) and drew a long-fingered hand over its head, hair twisting like snakes in its wake to make an elegant coiffure. My stomach turns to think of it. I pray to God I shall never witness the process again.

In any case, _pas d'important_; just another bizarre fact of my increasingly absurd life. It was a relief to have normal conversation of intimation and insinuation, even swathed in the Dread Princess' ever-present mantle of frankincense. She is as true a blade as ever. I will double our bet on whether she will ever show enough repentance to be allowed home; time has only made her more bitter. And our favourite princess, arching one exquisitely drawn brow, was entirely unsurprised to see me.

She: Rutbali Sanders, you are always as I expect you where I expect you.

I: Well met, O Princess of Entrancing Entrance. Was I expected here in Tyksmøde or here lounging in a ladies' dress shop, O Nightingale of Knowledge?

She: Both, sirrah. Your princess of Nova Zembla must need a dress. She was seen wearing Duses Vangorenhed's cast-offs in Kobenhaven – you would not allow your escort to be seen in such things, particularly not to a Tyks' ball.

I: Can I help that I always want to look my best for the prince of Tyksland, O Silver Mistress of Serpents' Tongues? I have a reputation to uphold.

She: Your reputation, damaquli, is noted. My visit at Twelfth Night was most informative. I will ask after the health of your princess. You did not take good care of her and she fell, rutbali.

I: It does us great honour that you interest yourself in the lives of those so far from home, O Orchid Among the Infidels.

She: I do not take an interest. I hold out my hands and these stories fall into them. Infidels are very careless with their words. It would do for you to learn that better, unutquan. (Vald, I must say: am I good or am I good?) There are enemies who laugh at you when your pen flourishes like it was spring though winter is coming.

I: I know of the winter, Princess, but not who will stand with us. Can we count you as a friend?

She: I have made you lose your touch, sirrah. Anger and impatience are not excuses for being lacklustre in your address. You used to be so much fun.

I: Or perhaps you no longer inspire me to such heights as once you did, O Fragrant Candle Lit in the Golden Afternoon.

I don't care, she deserved it and wasn't going to help us anyway – she cares for nothing but her kingdom of dust, and we Northerners are too removed to be anything more than a mild amusement. Besides, the Dread Princess is glorious when her pride is up, quite exquisite.

She: I do not take your meaning. I refuse.

I: It seems you have caught my plague, O Excellency of Courtesy. I offer my meaning as freely as my smiles and favours: you are surpassed in my eyes.

She: I do not know this lady, emekdar rutbali, or you have been unnaturally reserved in announcing your change of affections to the Crown Prince.

I: If you would like to know, all you need do is ask, Princess. Just ask.

Delfin had the inexcusable timing to be led out at that moment in her third ball gown for the approval of the man holding the purse-strings – would you trust a witch that had peeled off its own face to be an authority on the _a la mode_? But on this occasion, that dress, I must give praise where it is due. The Dread Princess was stalking through her day clad in those sheer diaphanous pantaloons, which while exceedingly impractical in the current climate, are very much appreciated – you have seen her legs, Vald, _ces sont des anges _– but Delfin, standing solemnly among all the glitter of that dress, eyes wary, held her own. The world will hold its breath when she dances in it.

Of course, until the balls I shall have to keep the girl under lock and key, and thank God we are staying with the witch of the city not at the Danmarchan House, because I would not put it past the Dread Princess to have an assassin on hand for just this sort of insult. And trust me, Vald, she was insulted. _Helvede_, she so forgot herself she asked a question.

She: _Her_?

I: The dress is an improvement certainly, but no, not my companion. I am speaking of a queen who lights the whole earth with her beauty; makes every place she enters more beautiful simply by being. She is perfection, and though you might try for a thousand and one nights, you could not shine brighter than the sun, O Pale and Ethereal Firefly. My lady, (I said to Delfin) you look very well, and I believe that is all we need for today. If you would like to return yourself to your usual attire, we shall presently depart.

Delfin turned stiffly, and tripped over the hem of her gown making it shiver with light. I almost went to help her but felt the eyes of the Dread Princess sharp upon me, so I slouched further on my chaise-longue, all yawns and tedium.

I have made myself an enemy today but I do not care. We shall circle around each other in public, politely bloodless swords drawn, and that shall be the most of it unless she takes her spite so far as to refuse an invitation to next year's Twelfth Night or whatever event it is to which your father invites her. Honestly, when one has dined with the Moon and the Sun, such rigid arrogance as hers seems all the more petty.

What a cheerful note to end a letter on. Let me see if I can find something more inspiring.

_For fanden da også,_ Angel Feet, in a moment of naivety almost blinding in its sheer ignorance, has gone off wandering to search for the girl that has the glass slippers (I find this out from a note crumpled by the front door like a newssheet blown in off the street). She has the witch with her, so I will take the time to prepare for accidentally meeting Alois outside the bathhouse he frequents while in town tomorrow. God give me strength.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>Obligatory message to the Captain. Love!<em>


	21. Alois

To Vald.

From Anders.

There is nothing the matter with me. In a moment of frustration I made myself an enemy I can afford. Should everyone else be polite to her, she shall simply shrug it off as the vainglorious ramblings of an unlanded wastrel. It is maddening to be around people who could help and yet be unable to approach them about anything more serious than a drink and the latest gossip. I lost my temper, Vald, unfortunate but we all knew there were reasons I'm a spy not a diplomat.

You should really find a way of working off guilt that doesn't involve excessive concern over the state of Delfin's health, happiness, and everything in between. I am here, am I not? I won't let anything untoward happen to her. She did not find the slippers – the witch is next to useless. It could tell you the present location of every noble guest attending Flori's balls, or how to find the best spiced sausage in the city, but ask it to find an unknown and it is as helpless as it is indifferent. Delfin was off again this morning so we walked a short way together before I had to turn for the bathhouse. I'm not entirely sure what her dream was. She floated downstairs to break her fast, composed as ever, and only said that it had been very pleasant and everyone called her Marie-Therese. It seems too simple a thing to warrant the witch of the city capturing it in a crystal globe, but if that is all I have already devised a scheme.

As for Alois, for the love of heaven, I don't think Alois could be more of a smug ass if he tried. The steam room is too hot, the ice baths too cold, the masseuse has hands like legs of boiled mutton, _quelle horrifique_, and he apologises to me – _ah, Sondairs, tout cela est trop, je suis humil__é__e mortellement_ – if only I had come last year, before the rabble discovered its existence, then it was fit to patronise.

I swear, the only reason I put up with him is for his cognac which, _pis det_, is still the definition of perfection as it was when I saw him in Sodsprut last spring. You'd really think after everything I've been through the past month I would have found _some_ fantastical beverage to surpass it that I could throw in Alois' supercilious face. It's not fair. I like a idiot with terminally loose lips and a childless uncle in the upper echelons of the Fransk empire as much as the next person, but does it have to be _him_.

_Also,_ he was wearing ruffles. Do you have any idea what ruffles do to the proportions of a man of my stature? I am going to look like a pubescent clown wearing his mother's nightgown until the fashion changes. Unless we starve first.

The Franks, by fair means or foul (or by deciphering the ridiculous bird-code – have I mentioned lately how grateful I am for Renard that we don't need to use it anymore?), know about the shortage of Danmarchan winter stores and that there is food hidden in Tyks' monasteries. The way he was littering hints about you would think he thought us too stupid to put together that bit of obviousness. My apologies, of course he does: he is a Franks and we are the lowly turnip folk. Tell me, is the counsel any further on deciding a plan of action? I was thinking of paying a visit to the Domme here to see if I could shake anything loose from the Archbishop, or would that be too obvious? It terrifies me to think how easily everything could go up in smoke. The storerooms we found were small but seemed to go on forever – probably left over from the Persecution – and they were stuffed full. A few well-placed flames and it would all burn.

But _fanden det_, even if we stand on the edge of a precipice at least we have the sense to know it is a _real_ emergency. The Fransk are all at alarums' end because the Empress has grown a fondness for gilding anything that doesn't move, and they are running out of ready metal. _Quelle catastrophe, Sondairs, ce qui est à faire? Le monde, c'est sûrement se termine!_

The consequences couldn't be all _that_ bad were I to take the liberty of rearranging Alois' stupid nose, could they? Though something less pretentious wouldn't suit him nearly so well.

* * *

><p><em>Time to pay up, Captain.<em>

_It's been brought to my attention that you, dear lovely readers, are not in my head and therefore have no idea what the whole situation with countries in this world is let alone the people who populate said countries. Picture a map of Europe: Tyksland is pretty much Germany except it's taken over Poland as well, the Fransk empire covers France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, the Danmarches is basically Denmark except the whole peninsula has slipped to the left a bit so Tyksland has no access to the sea except the Baltic, the mouth of which is controlled by the Danmarches below and Norgenmede above. The Fransk empire is the major player with fertile ground and land and sea access for trading (fortunately if they were going to expand it would be south where the weather's warmer), but Tyksland is coming up behind because of their woods and ore deposits (they have huge mountains like the one where the Sun rests, yes?) - all they need is the sea for trading routes, which is what makes them so dangerous to the Danmarches._

_I know this is cheating and I should have found a way to slip it all into the actual story, but at the moment I'm being crushed beneath the amount of information I might possibly should have already told you only I didn't know it at the time and it's too awkward to go change it in chapter now. I suddenly understand why people write second drafts._


	22. La Belle Incconue

To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.

From Andersen Sanders, thoroughly chandeliered.

My lord, thank you for your kind words regarding redecoration. Our ambassador was good enough to pass them on to me, with many a censorious phrase condemning wasting the prince's time with wallpaper, but I think he is simply jealous and besides who would credit the opinion of a man who could live in _that house_ and not contract a mortal illness? However, there are greater matters afoot than the Lord Ambassador's lack of taste. My lord, we are all here in a flutter over a _mystery_ – a mystery in female form.

The ball was going on as Tyks' balls do – somewhat stuffy but when one decides to host balls at the beginning of winter for God knows what reasons at least the stuffiness keeps the heat in and the evening's chill out, and the _company_, my lord! When word was sent out that every female of marriageable age was to attend, you would have assumed, as had I, it meant every marriageable female of sufficient birth to frequent a palace, but no. When I arrived with my charge on my arm, the ballroom was more than half full with dairy maids and serving girls rigged out in their best muslins, God as my witness. One hardly knew if one was supposed to ask them to dance or ask them to fetch one a drink – and I swear to it they didn't know either.

I had resigned myself to the most graceless evening of my life when all of a sudden there was a profound silence. Dancers stopped in their rotations, violins shuddered to an unharmonious halt, and even Herr Niesen Hund stopped his incessant snuffling. Every eye turned and was fixated on the singular beauties of an unknown newcomer poised at the top of the Grand Staircase. She seemed unprepared for such violent, silent admiration and her exquisite hand rose to clutch at the delicate necklace encircling her divine throat – I can only pity you, my lord, that adjectives cannot truly capture the reality that manifested in that ballroom.

Prince Florian was at her side in an instant, and drew her down the staircase. Her steps were light and uncertain, but dazzling in slippers that seemed made of glass impossible as it sounds. Crowds parted before them, and the orchestra once more picked up their tune so their steps appeared as dancing as the prince led the lady to the table where his royal parents held court. They sat for a little time, and food was placed on plates in front of them but not a morsel did the prince eat so enraptured was he by her beauty. The mysterious lady then curtsied an excuse and went to speak to two rather plain girls I might have taken for milk maids except for the exquisite costliness of their silks. She chattered to them as they ate the oranges and limes she had brought with her, juices running down their chins, and she seemed a good deal less anxious then when she had been sitting very neat and straight at the top table in the unobstructed gaze of every person in attendance.

I found myself in company with Vicomte Alois Bitenez (who allowed me in on the secret of a most excellent bathing-house only yesterday), and Marquise Lavinia Bequem zu Übersehen, not looking at all the worse for wear having been so quickly ejected from Prince Florian's affections despite many thinking they might make a match of it. The former was certain we must find out the identity of the beautiful unknown at once, but the latter felt the girl's name was immaterial so long as the name of her modiste could be discovered. Bitenez went to charm the ersatz-milkmaids, the Ladies Stiefschwestern as it transpired, but they were none the wiser – or so they claimed with alarmingly coy smiles.

Half the speculation – for we know there will _always_ be speculation – might have been put to bed except that no one could get near enough to divest the lady of her secrets. The prince held her in thrall all night, or she he, dancing as though they would never tire. It was only by ingenious methods for which I'm sure his waltz-partner was ready to disembowel him, that the curious Zoltan Kaparthy managed to overhear enough of their speech to declare the _bella dona_ a patriot of Ungarn – and not only Ungarsk, but of royal blood. She is a princess!

There hardly seems a point in holding the remaining two balls when the outcome is so very obviously decided. Nevertheless I shall attend – in the first, we do not yet know this princess' name and how can I expect you to share the happy news around the country without a name to attach to Prince Florian's? And in the second, my lord, I cannot tell you what a joy it is to be in civilised company again. it is everything I could have wished for and your must thank His Majesty for me profusely for delivering my invitation to me post-haste. I am quite overcome.

* * *

><p><em>ElfineStarkadder: nyah, so there.<em>

_O Captain mine, I may be willing to trade letters from Anders for Fiere's life. Plan accordingly._


	23. MarieTherese

_If you don't remember the dream the witch of the city had for Del, I think it was in 'Alois' when Anders mentioned it. Apologies for no greater certainty, I'm late for work._

* * *

><p>To Vald.<p>

From Anders.

_Bide din egen ører, kæreste_. I'll have you know I am perfectly aware of the dangers a city poses to one of Angel Feet's – shall we say – singular naivety, but she is not quite the girl you remember any more. Yes, she is clever 'in _her own _way' (I do not need to think it because she is) which is why she has not been gallivanting idly. She will ever be herself, the one and only in all the world, but she's learning to be human. Besides, the habit of visiting every church and chapel she lays eyes upon has been resumed; between men of God and the witch of the city even your querulous grand-dame's heart must rest easy.

Of course no matter how far she has come, there was not a chance _i den vide verden_ that I was going to trust any fledgling skill beneath the critical gaze of the nobility and noblesse from half a dozen or more countries. Even in the carriage as we approached the palace, she tipped her head to one side and asked why there is war and when I tell you we should invade a little more of Tyksland than you would like does that mean there was an invading (sic.) before? As if it was anyone's but the Tyks' fault that six generations back they were so obtuse that they had to be convinced through strength of arms that a river is a more natural national boundary than an arbitrary line in the soil. And can it be helped that the half of Splittet Port that fell on their side of the river preferred Danmarchan rule? These were all arguments, among a great many other topics, I instructed Delfin she was under no circumstance allowed to broach to anyone _at all_ upon entering the ballroom.

Fortunately it was not that difficult to distract her, for the whispered debate had delivered us all the way from the carriage to the top of the Grand Staircase, and we were announced, "The Honourable Andersen Sanders of Orlamonde, and guest Her Royal Highness Marie-Therese af Havet."

Her hand tightened on my arm painfully. "What are you doing?"

I grinned. "Making your dream come true."

She looked about to weep, or I thought she did but when I looked again she was as composed as ever, and told me, "There are some times when you are very nice to me, and I don't know what to do."

"For now smile, walk down these steps without falling, and _pour l'amour de ciele_, remember to answer if someone calls you Marie-Therese."

"Will you?"

"If you wish it."

"I wish it more than nearly everything in your world or mine."

"So simple a wish it is my privilege to obey. But only for the balls; when we leave you will be my Delfin again."

"That is not a _human_ name," she said with sudden urgency.

"How could I insult you so? To think of you as something so drearily common-place as human."

She turned her face away from me as we reached the bottom of the stairs. "You are human but are not common-place and only sometimes dreary."

"And you are adorable when you attempt to rile me, Marie-Therese, but I shall have to disappoint you tonight." I bowed low over her hand and kissed it correctly.

Wait, there was a noise. _Un moment_.

.o.

Apologies, it seems I now jump at shadows. To resume, only the Dread Princess (by way of Alois for she will not speak to me) thought it odd my companion had a different name from what I had styled in my letters, and I'm sure she only mentioned it to remind me that she sees all and knows all – more luck to her, say I. The enquiry was easily answered by claiming the need for safety on the road for the Novaja Semljan princess. It is possible I invented a centuries-old conflict and implacable enemy who desired the blood of every true-born royal of Novaja Semlja; perhaps someone should warn them.

The ball was perfectly satisfactory; I'm sure there are many worse ways to spend an evening. The only real spice was a mysterious female whom rumour has it is a princess of the Ungarsk – though this is from the lips of Zoltan Kaparthy. Give a Kelten urchin a few weeks' elocution lessons and he'd say the same thing of her, no doubt. What made her of particular interest to me was her choice of footwear. The Sun's slippers are found, now it's left to discover the identity and address of the feet within them.

This quest had me quite distracted so I did not notice Delfin slip away from my side. To my horror, she had been cornered by the Archbishop, or she had cornered him, it was hard to say. The discussion between them at any rate appeared very earnest and knowing the kind of earnest thoughts Angel Feet comes up with, I swept over at once to rescue either or both of them.

"Excuse me, your Royal Highness, your Grace. I was wondering if I might have the pleasure of the next dance?"

The smile she bestowed upon me wasn't snide, no, and it wasn't mocking; it was a pat on the head, and oh it was cruel. "No."

"Just 'no'? With so little civility I am to be rejected. Is it your feet; are they hurting?"

"Anders," she said and held out her hand. I took it in mine. "You're an idiot. I say no because you are not good at dancing."

What can I say? I was speechless. Struck dumb.

"I have been dancing all my life with those who are as I was, and dance through the water as your fish dance through the air. Men of the land are very plodding creatures. It is not dancing that you do, I think, it is something much _pathetique_, like the cow, yes? "

"They are birds not fish," I informed her with greater dignity and benevolence than she deserved.

Her features smoothed to their blandest and she blinked, insolently. "Yes."

She is the most exasperating baggage in the world.

We did not dance in the end, but with the enlisted help of Alois and Lavinia (daughter of the western marquesstate, pretty but rather easy to overlook) contrived to teach Angel Feet some card games to wile away the hours that liquor could not.

Thus ends my report and I am for bed. I wanted to see the lay of the land and the rhythm of the people first, so tomorrow I shall go gather me rosebuds while I may. Don't wish me luck, you lummox, it'll only send me the very worst.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>Captain, part of the preceding was one of the very first things I wrote for this story (in fact one of the lines above was cut from Addy to my great regret at the time), part of it I wrote (very slowly) on a balmy night in Atlanta sitting next to you, and now I've finished it off at home. It's funny how things work out sometimes.<em>


	24. State Room

To Vald.

From Anders.

Worst news, Vald. The rosebuds I gathered me are not so sweet.

I left the ballroom under the guise of inebriation and a need for fresh air, and skirted around the long fountain to cut through the Orangerie towards the Staat Wing. The state room seemed like the most likely place to start – you never know, one day I might get lucky and find sitting on top a desk a revealing document someone forgot to tidy away. Before I was half way there, a branch snapped behind me and I whirled around.

"Of course it's you."

"Where are we going?"

"I left you in the previously-considered-capable hands of the ambassador. How did you find me?"

Delfin touched her hand to my cheek. "I cannot explain how I can be finding you, but I have a Moon tongue so I do." Only then did I realise that moonlight fell upon my face, dappled by the shadows of naked branches.

"There's no point sending you back, is there?" She gave me a speaking look and didn't deign to answer such a futile question. "This is one of those _ever_ so few situations when I know better than you, Delfin, so do as you're told and don't get in my way. Apologies won't be sufficient if we're caught. This is when you say something in agreement," I said after a pregnant pause.

"Where are we going?"

She trailed behind me, as we left the trees and entered the wing through one of the side doors. The long central corridor stretched out ahead of us, dimly lit by only half of the scones available. Someone must have been expected or they would have extinguished them all. After a few wrong doors, I found the one I was looking for. I took a candle from a bracket just outside and placed Delfin half in, half out of the doorway.

"I need you to keep watch. If someone comes, tap the door lightly; no loud noises. Blend into the shadows and the sounds of the night. Can you do that?"

She nodded. I left her there and turned my attention to the state room. Tall windows let in the moonlight all along the outer wall, almost bright enough to see by. A small side door at the end of the long room was locked so I picked it, but there was only an empty anteroom beyond. Heavy oak cases covered half the room, overflowing with paper in pigeon-holes and wonderfully clearly labelled. I learnt some interesting things trawling through them, but immaterial for the moment – remind me to tell you when I have more time. In the midst of a report on military numbers, the door to the corridor closed with a quiet snick.

Delfin stood in front of the door, her hands clasped tightly.

"_This_, this right here, what is happening now, is the reason I always have to ask you for some sign of positive agreement like you're a fingerling. Am I allowed to know why keeping watch was not to your taste?"

"I do not like the corridor with so few candles."

"Were you scared?"

"It is more interesting inside. Outside is an empty corridor, inside is a table."

I refrained from pointing out that she has been known to find interest in things far less interesting than an empty corridor, and resigned myself to trying to ignore the worst partner in crime ever to impose herself on a man drifting around the Tyks' table of state, trying to make sense of the map engraved upon it. It was not like I had originally planned on the luxury of a sentry, and at least she can be quiet.

The pigeon-holes awaited me, bristling with secrets. I tugged out the bundle filed under the north-east and a gold coin slid from on top of the papers into my palm so neatly it might have been planning its own escape. And I so nearly put it back, would have, if you Hesse-Kassels did not have such distinctive noses so very different from that of the Old Eagle. Your father's face on that coin had been sliced through, the gold peeling back to reveal the dull leaden metal beneath.

The false kronor lay so heavily in my hand and before my mind could fully grasp the consequences of it, Delfin's voice came from behind me.

"Where is Dieberei's earth?"

She stood with a finger poised delicately on Sonneschlafen Burg, and not, I think, by chance for all she can't read let alone decipher a map. "It is –" her free fingers walked east across the map, the smallest tapped unerringly the hills that bind the northern boundary of the Baron's holdings, " –here."

"What did the witch of the mountain tell you?" I asked.

She looked back over her shoulder. "The earth is crying."

Dieberei's land is crying, Vald. I had assumed that his coin press was a small treachery, just a little skimming off the top, because there have been no reports of change from his mines. No noble or royal communicate has complained of shortages, promises not kept or orders unfilled, and the smallfolk, the younger sons and unneeded uncles, have not been flocking to find work at a newly opened mine. Yet for all that the earth is crying so loud the witch of the mountain heard it. Sonneschlafen was as far east as we travelled, not far enough to catch the gossip of longer hours workers spend pillaging gold, silver, and base metals sufficient to fill all orders and have the coin to buy up the Danmarchan winter tithe.

And most damningly – I cannot forgive myself for being such a fool, to think the coin press was for clipping not counterfeiting – these coins are not smelted, Vald. They would have been found sooner if they were, even though Dieberei used a heavy hand with the gold to make up the weight. They've been minted and only the Old Eagle could supply the machine to do it. I'm so sorry, Vald.

I did not search out missives of command for confirmation; one only needs to draw a dagger across these false coins to see the truth. Besides, time was running short and we were sure to be missed soon. I placed the kronor back in its prison precisely as it had been, and nodded Delfin towards the door. She touched Sonneschlafen once more in farewell then moved to the door, opened it and closed it again with quick, noiseless grace.

"There are men who are in the corridor. They did not see," she said.

"How long?" The windows were locked and would make too much noise. The other door was a wide room away.

"Not long enough."

I took her arm and pulled her close. "Do you trust me?"

She nodded. I couldn't hear a thing thanks to the thickness of the door but saw the dim shadows of the men who stood outside through the gap beneath it.

"Then play along. Our lives depend on this being convincing."

.o.

Do you know, Vald, I think A.S. could describe what happened next much better than I. And he's so terribly distraught about the whole thing. Yes, I am quite convinced; it would be well-nigh _unchivalrous_ of me to write anything more of the matter until he has had his chance to regale you.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>Things to consider before heedlessly beginning an epistolary novella #34: Since the person writing has obviously extricated themself from a situation and found their way to pen and paper, there's no real way to do a cliff-hanger. Unless you shamelessly invent one.<em>

_Captain, at least try to get Clancy to keep her knickers on, would you?_


	25. Deleterious Slander

_Remind me, how did the last chapter end... oh yeah. Heh heh heh._

* * *

><p>To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.<p>

From Andersen Sanders, an honourable gentleman though some seem like to discount the fact which is entirely unfair for when have I ever – _ever_, my lord – done something to deserve such slander?

My lord, I have _never_ been more _mortified_ in my entire life. One can hardly bring oneself to legitimise the evening by putting pen to paper. If I could trust _that girl_ to be about in the world without completely destroying the reputation of some other innocent fellow, I would cast her out into the wilds and be done with her. I would, be she ever so honoured a guest of yours – really, my lord, she has at last gone _too far_.

I was having a lovely evening at this evening's ball, and had nearly managed to edge myself sideways into a moment of time with the prince and his mysterious paramour when I notice _that girl_ was missing from the ballroom. I gave so much the benefit of the doubt that I checked first the gaming rooms in the deluded hope that she might have joined a game of whist like any _natural _person. When that turned up nothing, next were the grounds and fountains but they were equally empty of addle-pated visitors with less sense than the man who made a boat out of turnips. Then I noticed the lights lit outside the Staat Wing and with heavy heart I turned myself towards them.

_Surely_, I thought to myself in paroxysms of distress, _surely she cannot have been so ill-mannered, so astonishingly naive, so catastrophically unlearned in the way of polite society, as to trespass upon a foreign power's political quarters when she had only been invited to social ball._

It might as well have saved my thoughts.

I found her not merely in one of the dozens of public and entirely innocuous gathering rooms, _åh nej_, not her. No, she had to be in the state room, running her fingertips over the map carved into the Tyks' table of state as though she had a perfect right, as though she _owned_ the thing, which,_ my lord!_ – no, I must tell this in order. Arguments did not move her, her only response a slow blink of unconcern and so I was moved (and this is the only part of my actions I might possibly apologise for but I believe they were well warranted and will defend my innocence to the grave) to lay my hands upon the lady to forcibly remove her from the room.

It was at _this point_, that the steward of the king and two attendants burst in upon the room – though of course I don't mean 'burst' for it is their room and they were not the ones gracelessly within it – and formed _entirely_ the wrong impression of what was going on. They insinuated – my lord, you must brace yourself for this; I can only apologise I must relay such a thing to you to give a full and honest account of what occurred – that I had knowingly plotted a secret _tryst_. With _that girl_.

I have never been so _demeaned_ and _humiliated_ in all the years of my existence, not even the day I declared myself a master of fencing to my two elder brothers after one and a half lessons. I was _clearly_ not trysting but attempting to eject her - why, I was doing them a _service_. If there was _any _inappropriate behaviour, it was only because I my hand had been forced. And who _in den vide verden_ would choose a _state room_ for the setting of a tryst when there are many better and more comfortable nooks in the public wing, not to mention moonlit follies in the gardens? _Not_ that I would know, but anyone with half a brain can speculate! But such logic fell on deaf and stubborn ears.

Then _that girl_ had the nerve, the _audacity_, to declare she liked the table very much – which was a fair comment, for it is a very nice table; the map is really quite exquisite – but _then_ had the sheer impudence to ask if she might have it! If they might let the noble state of Novaja Semlja buy it from them. She _propositioned_ the Tyks' table of state having been found _sneaking_ into their state room to '_look_' at things. Had I known she wanted a tour, I could have obliged most readily but, no, this is the girl who was found outside your rooms in the middle of the night because she preferred to be there – _this _is the girl with no sense of propriety, _this_ is Her Royal Highness Marie-Therese af Havet of Novaja Semlja.

And I tried to tell them, I did, I _tried_, to show them that this was just the sort of thing I was talking about, that I was clearly not the one at fault when faced with such obliviousness to the propriety of polite behaviour, when they accused me – me! _I_ – of being more than four sheets to the wind. _Sanders_ can hold their liquour, by God – yes, we can. I may not be able to catch a fish but any drink I can grasp firmly. _Firmly_, my lord. Like buttocks upon a maiden fair – _not _that I would know because I am an honourable gentleman who would not know such things!

It was one insult too many so I took _that girl_ firmly in hand – by _the wrist_ – and left. Swept through the Staat Wing and the gardens and yelled for our carriage for such slander cannot be borne. I _demand_ retribution, and an apology, and anything else you can think of to make those slanderous, deleterious, calumnious, presumptuous _worms_ crawl for having so insulted the honour of Andersen Sanders.

* * *

><p><em>Oh Captain, my Captain, chair-stander and movie-watcher; I enjoyed this one.<em>


	26. Charlottenburg

To Vald.

From Anders.

You show so very little interest in our being arrested for espionage, I've a good mind not to tell you whether we were or not. I can send another messenger after A.S.'s letter and have it destroyed so you will never know what happens; it would not be difficult to do. But as you so unobligingly point out, yes, since I am writing to you, I did manage to extricate us from the situation. We were immediately asked to leave the palace and I allowed myself the pleasure of complaining with bitter eloquence the entire way out of the indignity of having to depart a ball before the clock had even stuck midnight.

However, that indignity revealed itself to be of greatest good fortune. As Delfin and I stood in the cold, waiting for our coachman to be found so he could drive us home – his absence confirming the absurdity of leaving so early – who should pass us by but the mysterious woman of mysterious name the whole city is on tenterhooks about? She got into a curiously round carriage and took off west, and I had to stop Delfin running off after her.

"No, into the carriage."

"Anders, we need to go, please."

"_In_, Angel Feet."

She did but began arguing as soon as she was inside. "The stones all look the same when there is no light – you must be coming with me, please. I will be lost."

"I know." I knocked on the roof and called _Home_.

"No! Not home. She has the slippers and I know you are always busy but we must go with her, _please_."

"Delfin..." I honestly was at a loss for words. How could she think she needed to beg for my help? "Of course we're going to follow her, but we'll go two blocks towards home then cut west when we're out of sight of the palace so no one will know that's what we're doing. We'll find her, I promise."

And we did, with me only having to roll out of the coach to demand drunkenly of bystanders if they saw which way our friend went, in the round carriage that looks like a pearly pumpkin, all curly and wiggly bits, and stuff. It pulled into a walled town house in Charlottenburg; not a place with which I'm particularly familiar. Bourgeois mostly, I think – no wonder nobody recognises her.

We watched for a time as the gates were barred and candles were lighted in one of the upstairs room. Before I could suggest we take a closer look, two men in un-liveried guards' uniforms strolled around the corner.

I swore quietly, "_Fanden det_, they're not even trying."

"What is it?"

"Those two guards, what can you say of them?"

Delfin considered, eyes careful. "Their speaking has no accent."

"Good, though technically they have a Tyksmøde accent. What else?"

"If you tell me what you want me to know, this will be faster."

"Killjoy. The one on the left: he was on the carriageway at Großesverdammtes Burg last night keeping an eye on the arrivals – to have him on shift here the very next night is frankly just insulting. Did they think no one would notice? Those are royal guards. Flori and the Old Eagle know exactly who she is, so the question remaining is why keep her secret?"

It's Sunday tomorrow – _lort_, no, it is Sunday today. Dear God, will I ever get to sleep? – so there is no ball to distract us. Mass in the morning, and then we shall surprise the _belle innconue_ in her lair.

You must tell me everything that happens when your father's counsel finally wakes up to meet. Try to keep my father from having an apoplexy - tell him I'm here and looking into it. Or don't, that might make it worse.

* * *

><p><em>Captain, it's all lonely knowing there are no more notes at the end of a Clancy chapter waiting for me.<em>


	27. Aschen

To Vald.

From Anders.

Tell me this, Vald, while I don't deny it is a plot with more subtlety and sense than I usually credit to the King's council, how are they proposing to make people give up the money in the first place? This is why the country needs me, to point out obvious if inconvenient truths. As much as I enjoy the idea of the Franksmen paying us for the metal the Tyks dumped on us in fake currency, try convincing a Danmarchan farmer in the middle of winter that his pile of silver coins aren't real as you whisk them from under his nose.

What we need is the food back – how hard can it possibly be to storm a monastery? Watching the Tyks bishops sit around on their _fedt æsler_, I was ready to pull my sword and hold them hostage by the time Mass ended, and _then_ the Archbishop stopped us at the door to tell the 'intriguing young princess' some nonsense about animals and their souls, and a theologian called John Paul. I hardly think God's intention for their lives was to be obsequious sycophants but that seems the only call at work here.

The distraction of the glass slippers was a relief, though I was relegated to guard status. We had made our way to the back of the house the mysterious woman had inadvertently lead us to last night where we found an orchard whose denuded branches stretching over the wall were to be our point of entry – for, as Delfin had pointed out, the wet girl could not still be unknown and be able to cry under a tree for the witch of the woods to hear if there were not some trees hidden inside the compound with her. We were lucky, and our quarry was sitting in a glass conservatory attached to the back of the main house, easily seen from the orchard. Here Delfin informed me that I was to stay and watch for guards while she went to talk to the girl. I tried to protest but was told that I had been very busy all week and am not interested in talking about slippers. Impossible to say if that was an admonishment of simply her being herself.

The back door was unlocked so in less than two minutes, I saw Delfin appear through the plants that filled the glass room. The mystery woman was startled but Delfin said something to placate her, tipping her head to one side so familiarly I could almost hear her voice in my head. I was too far away to see what was said – I should really learn lip-reading in the event that one day I might be closer to an important conversation on the other side of a window – but in another three minutes or so, the two were embracing in that particular way of females that means they have found a heart's sister. At one point they looked out in my direction. The sound of footsteps and male voices came from over the perimeter wall; they stopped on the corner to light a cheroot and gossip. It was time to leave.

I snuck into the house, caught the sound of happy voices and followed them into a grove of warm, moist greenery. Pushing aside a clinging leaf, I hissed, "Delfin?"

"_Anders_!" I don't think she can ever have smiled, really smiled, in the year and a half I've known her because I wouldn't have been flattened by the radiance of it as she said my name if she had. She flung her arms around me and we stumbled backwards into the wall.

"Del, look at your eyes. I didn't know you could see the pain in them until it was gone."

"We should dance!"

"You don't like my dancing – you _told_ me."

"Then I will be teaching you to dance, but we must dance. Now."

"There's no music."

"You are being ... _exasperating_ _baggage_," she said in a poor imitation of my own tone.

"You're an idiot," the lady chimed in.

I glowered at Delfin. "Are you contagious?" And to the girl, "Whatever she has told you is not strictly true for she has a particularly singular perspective on the world which does not allow for things such as common sense."

"That is why I can trust her. But you are from the Danmarches, _nein_? You should not be here; I'm not allowed to talk to you."

"Why not?"

"For reasons. My king asked for my silence so I shall obey."

"Patriotism is to be valued," I assured her, "I love my country too. All I was intending to do anything but collect Delfin, but now you've intrigued me ... sorry, what's your name?"

"Aschen," said Delfin, as Aschen told me, "You may take your intrigue and leave, _herr_."

"You're right, Mademoiselle Aschen, to have presumptions of intrigue is impossibly rude of me. I'll beg your leave to withdraw – Delfin, will you come away before the guards appear? You're very well-guarded here," I added. "I don't suppose anything gets in or out."

She fell instantly to defence, as I hoped. "I'm not a prisoner, Herr Sanders."

"But you only cry where no one can hear you," objected Delfin. I hid a smile; her perspicacity would be useful were it not more often than not directed at me.

"That was one time. Mostly. I was just feeling a little overwhelmed by things."

"Then you should change them. I do not understand this."

"The witch didn't understand either. The only part she could was that the shoes they gave me were too small, so she gave me those slippers. I'm sorry for that; I didn't mean to take them from you."

Angel Feet looked about to dismiss the girl's apology as similarly incomprehensible so I thought it best to step in. "Uncomfortable truths are not polite, Delfin. Come away." I bowed to Mademoiselle Aschen, "You stopped her hurting, I owe you a debt."

"I didn't do it for–"

"Nevertheless. If you're ever in need, call long and call loud for the witch of the city: it will find us."

"_Erwarten_. Where were you leading me, Herr Sanders? You were softening the ground to tell me something but changed your mind. What did you want for me to know?"

I was glad I'd offered her a promise of help. She has a fine mind; too good for Flori. "The Danmarches will starve over the winter. Our harvest was bought up with false coin."

"And you think Tyksland is behind it?"

"I've held the proof in my hand."

"To what purpose?"

"There I've only speculation. But if it were me? If I had weakened a country over the winter, destroyed its currency so it could not buy the food it needed, the arms, the aid? I would declare war with the first thaw of spring."

.o.

We left, returned to the town house, and I wrote this letter to you until Delfin called me down to learn how to dance having convinced the witch it would play for us. The lesson ran until we collapsed with watery knees, leant against the furniture and toasted sausages in the open fireplace like children. Only then did I have a chance to examine her _forpulede _feet.

"You have blisters. You bought slippers too big for you, didn't you? – so they would fit Aschen when the time came – but in the meantime, you've spent two night in shoes that rubbed your skin _raw_–"

"It is no matter; it is only a small hurt."

"It does matter, you _idiot_. Have you even thought of infection, of blood poisoning, of scars? If you will not let me care for you, you need to take care of yourself!"

I can't express, there are no words for how furious she makes me because she never _thinks_, not of herself. Does she think she's immortal? I'm exhausted. "Why? Why do you keep doing this?"

She shrank against the settee. "I'm sorry, Anders."

I don't remember what I said in return. I don't think I even did, _verdammt._ I will apologise. This missive has become a tome, why are you still reading? Surely the crown prince has better things to do with his time. Go get fitted for a new cloth-of-gold waistcoat or something.

^Anders

* * *

><p><em>Captain, apologies – I fricking suck at writing sequential action. But we got there, and the next ones should be easier. <em>

_I always say that._


	28. Del's Dream

_This one's important, so I'm putting the author's note up here were you won't be tempted to reply to it instead of the letter by the time you get to the end._

_Service announcements: If you haven't reread _Little Mermaid_ the original lately, paying particular attention to the exact deal she struck with the sea witch, for serious, do. This letter explains some things, but you know me, I'm never going to spell it out. Where's the fun in that? _Også_, it's the 1__st__ of November (in New Zealand) and I have reluctantly been convinced that Nanowrimo will be fun. Not that I have a sterling updating record anyway, but be aware that trying to write a novel at the same time as Anders is more than likely going to throw a spanner in the works._

_Captain, _te amo_; your patience is otherworldly._

* * *

><p>Vald, I need your help.<p>

I woke in the night but I didn't know why. But I went to her room anyway, on a feeling, on an instinct. She was dreaming, the witch of the city's dream egg clutched tight in her hand, and she was peaceful but she was crying. I couldn't tell if she was sighing or sobbing, that must have been the noise I heard. I shook her shoulder and it took so long, too long for her to open her eyes. She woke with lips trembling and eyes wet, staring blankly at the ceiling.

"What is it? Are you well? I'm here, _ædle_. Don't fret, I'm here."

"Anders?" She tried to take a deep breath. "I am well. It is nothing," she said, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes, trickling unnoticed to the pale shell of her ear.

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

"Yes. Always."

"What's wrong? _Min kære_, you can tell me."

Her hand reached out for mine and I took it. "I dreamed that I had a soul. And it is ... beautiful and everything made sense, and it is like I am in the sea again but it isn't water. I live and move and have my being in love. You call me Marie-Therese, and when you are looking at me I know that you– I can't stand it!" She pulled away from me and sat up in a miserable huddle, drawing her knees up to her chest as a barrier between us and dropping her head against them.

"What can't you stand? You can tell me what's wrong."

Another steadying breath. "It is nothing. There is not anything."

"Delfin, please."

"Go away, you are too busy and you do not have time for this."

"What are you talking about? It's the middle of the night."

"Then I am too busy and you can go and find your own thing for doing because you cannot be here." My own words on her tongue.

"Is that why you're mad? The rules are different in the city, I told you – I thought you understood. There are places and conversations I can't take you to because you're not a man; it's not how I want it, it's how it is."

"In the palace, you forgot me and left me behind."

"Forget you? I remember the flowers in a tisane for dizziness, eighteen generations of Norgen royalty, every line of the poem I wrote for Vald when we were eleven, and the exact shape of my sister's eyes – how could I possibly forget you?"

"You don't care – you said so. The angry princess did not know the Sun, but I do."

She didn't even hear the whole of that conversation. What was I supposed to do – throw her to the wolf in _foda _princess' clothing? "Milady Sun has nothing to do with it. I cannot touch the Sun, she cannot teach me to dance, we cannot argue about how she would feed her stupid army of cats. _Dit fjols_, of course I care."

"You care about everything. You care about too many things. I am another thing you care about."

"I have to. I mean, you are not any other thing, of course. But I have to care, you know why – you don't understand."

"I do," she said. "I can see to your heart, Andersen Sanders. You do not see to mine."

"_What's wrong_? There's something wrong – why can't you just tell me like any normal person!"

"I am not any normal person. I cannot tell you."

"No, you _will not_ tell me, _fanden dine øjne_, there's a difference. Marie-Therese–"

"Do not."

I broke something. I shouldn't have said the name. I broke something – I could see it.

"You're not cruel, so go away, Andersen Sanders."

"Del, _please_."

"Go away. I do not want you here." She lay down and turned her back to me and would not open her eyes, as if that were the _end_ of it.

Vald, I need you. What is she hiding? What won't she tell me, she _will not _tell me.

The name.

Marie-Therese, it's a human name when Delfin is not. _Souložit_. And the time when she sat on the knee of the witch of the mountain learning _humus_: humanity, humour, humility – she would not have bent to ask how to make me happy if she had not learned it, she told me – from dust we were born and to dust we will return. Not water. I didn't tell you about the time with the witch in the woods when we drank too much and sat too close, and I told her sometimes the only faith I have is that Annah has to be waiting for me, I can't not see her again – she smiled and said how human that was, none of her sisters could wait for her, it must be nice to be human and have people waiting beyond death. Something that was a mermaid – I am not sure I'm one any longer when I have legs.

She's not human, Vald. I knew that, I thought I knew that. She's different but she told me not to think she was special – she's learning but she's not human. Vald. She's not.

How long can a mermaid live on the land


	29. From Delfin

To Vald.

From Anders.

Delfin is dying and I need your help. It is a long story, the discovering of it – because of course she could not simply _tell_ me that something important was wrong, oh no, not her – perhaps I will tell you of it when I am home, or I may send you the letter though some of the language is hardly fit to be seen and needs to be rewritten. I came to the realisation in the middle of the night and even allowed her an appropriate amount of time to have come awake before confronting her in the morning

I asked her point blank whether it was true, that she was dying, and pressed her until she allowed that yes, it was. So of course my next question was what I could do to help and she said she could not tell me – no, not that she 'could' not but that she _would_ not, as though the continuation of her life was some type of guessing game I might be agreeable to playing.

The Sun cannot help her, nor the Moon this time and apparently would not anyway because there are only soon many boons he will allow for a deal that was made in good faith.

"What sort of deal?" I asked, all patience and fortitude.

"A private deal," said she, "that I said yes to with willing and knowingly, mostly. There was a thing that I could not foresee when I was still in the water – many things become strange on the land, do you not think? "

"Yes," said I. "Such as you not telling me what the _helvede_ is wrong with you that you are dying! Can a witch undo it? Surely they are impressed enough by your title that one of them would want to help."

"All of the witches here are of the land. What would they know?" she said in confusion, pedantic to the last.

"So it was a deal with the witch of the sea. Must I be forced to drag every detail from you, surely we are beyond such nonsense!"

She folded her arms across herself and looked stubbornly at the floor. "No, I will not say anything more. You must stop shouting, I do not like it and I will not tell you."

'Not me. Well then, _if_ not me then–"

"Please, just stop it, Anders."

"No, we will get to the bottom of this. You say you will not speak to me that means there is someone to whom you might. Is it one of the witches?"

"Anders, stop."

"_I can't_ – don't you see that? If the witches will not do, what about the Moon?"

"What about my Lord Moon?"

"The Sun?"

"Never."

"Then who?"

"I do not–" She sounded about to cry in frustration but a person cannot let that affect them, not in a situation like this.

"Del, I think you do not realise how very serious I am. I will not let you die. Your father, the king of the sea, would you tell him? We will go and find him. Put your clothes on, we leave at once."

"There is the ball tonight," she tried to remind me.

"Not important, this is more important." (_Zut alore_, I said that, I must have said that, I cannot have meant it.)

"Fine! I will tell the prince if you will stop talking at me, you idiot."

"Vald? _Vald_?"

"Yes. Prince. Just stop talking at my head."

I demanded that this letter of mine be sent along with her letter to you, and rushed up to write it. You must tell me what it says. We can no longer be friends if you will not tell me what it says.

_Pis det_, I don't mean that. Tell me. Please.

.o.

_To Prince._

_From Delfin._

_You love your friend more than you love me so I will not tell you why I am dying, and you will not tell him that I did not because he will yell and argue and be more angry at me when it is only wasting his time to be so. What I need is not another duty to be placed on his mind and made heavier still, it would not work like that and I will not allow it. I should have lied and said he could do nothing but he would not stop talking my head in circles so I couldn't do the lying._

_I have learnt new things as we travel. I want to thank you for letting me stop loving you. You were very kind to a stranger girl who followed you like a lost ... puppy, the witch of the city says the word should be. But you were very proper in your acting towards me, and so I could learn to like you not love you anymore, which is good because it was not a very good love that I loved you with. I did not know you and I could not see to your heart. But you are very pretty and I hope your princess loves you to your heart._

_You make Anders happy, this is good. When I die it will hurt him but I don't think as much as I will hurt leaving him. It will be another thing he remembers when he is quiet and forgets to be happy. I would like to know his sister, and tell her not to play near rivers because it will make her brother hurt forever. You will know what to do with this. I talked to the witch of the river when Anders was going to be slippery-friends with Alois, and the witch remembered Annah and said she was scared but knew her brother would save her and she never stopped knowing, or loving him, even when she died , and her soul is in heaven waiting. I think human souls are such beautiful things, they make you beautiful like no other animal, not like fish. I do not know if I tell this to Anders that he will be happier or sadder. What do you think?_

_Please make his mind be easy. I am dying, that is not a broken thing he can shout at and argue with until it is fixed. Please._


	30. Fragment I

_Nej_, to hell with you, Vald, I will not be put off with _sludder vrøvl_ jealous answers


	31. Fragment II

Vald, I don't believe you. Delfin did not say I could do something because of some slip of the tongue. Her approach to syntax and conjugation is novel at best, but it was a simple declarative statement and what she says is true. Truthfully, for better or worse, is the only way her mind works. There is something, I can _feel _it. I don't know why _you_ of all people are lying to me but stop being a _pik_


	32. Fragment III

Please, Vald, I love


	33. Gratitude

To Vald.

From Anders.

Well, thank you so much for your letter; you're really no help at all, are you?

I will find out what part exactly Aschen plays in this all in good time. I was gaining her trust – there's a process. I will see her again tonight at the last ball, though after our performance two nights ago no doubt I will be under watch. Being on one's best behaviour is so very tiresome, I expect I will want to be straight for my bed. Don't expect a letter from me tonight.

* * *

><p><em>Kia ora all. This is the last of the updating everyday - mainly because I don't have the next letter written yet. Just thought I would mention, since I couldn't while the Fragments were ongoing because it would have ruined the drama, in amongst the conventions I've made up about writing these letters, any letter that doesn't end with a fullstop (or period, for my American brethren) doesn't get sent. <em>


	34. Cinderella

To HRH Valdmar Hesse-Kassel IV, By the Grace of God Crown Prince of the Danmarches, Lord o'er the Wends, Count Palantine of the Rhine, and Privy to the Sea.

From Andersen Sanders, witness of attentions unsought and scandals unbelievable.

Further scandal at the balls in honour of HRH Florian! I declare, I never expected to be so well entertained in the Tyks' court – it is really too bad of them to have been hiding their talent for melodrama all these year. However, their light is now most emphatically removed from beneath the proverbial bushel.

But first, my triumph of the evening. I was exchanging some ribaldry with Bitenez and Marquise Bequem zu Übersehen, when Bitenez broke off in his laughter to whistle –not that Bitenez would do something so uncouth (my lord, you should see the size of his ruffles, he is an lodestar for us all) but in the rising of his eyebrows one could see that whistling would have been the reaction of a less exemplary man.

"_Oh la la_, Sanders," he murmured so I had to strain to hear him. "The attention of _la belle inconnue_ is removed from our prince and who do you think it has settled on?"

I began to turn, hoping to spy the mysterious princess, but he stopped me.

"_Non_, Sanders – one does not gape in this manner, _évidemment, oui_? You will look so casually behind when I say, and not let her know you know she looks at you."

Following his instructions, my eyes made a nonchalant survey of the room and discovered Prince Florian and his ever present dance partner had drawn quite near to our position through the pattern of the waltz. Our eyes met, the lady's and mine, and hers did not display a speck of admiration though I could hardly say why. I need not assure you that I had outdone myself in my preparations for the evening's entertainment, for when do I ever not? Well, if it is Prince Florian's wish to shackle himself to a steely-eyed termagant then it is not my place to try and stop him.

And there, my lord, is the scandal of the thing, for it seems that she may not wish to be so shackled herself. Can you credit it? I certainly cannot. Why, I thought my eyes deceived me never mind that I was right there in the ballroom when it happened. Others will try and tell you the tale of it but I know for a fact that my lord Ambassador of the Danmarches was in the dining hall away from the worst of the noise to talk about whatever dull, important matters he finds it necessary to concern himself with clearly the most important of matters was taking place in the other room so don't believe a word that he writes. I saw exactly how it happened.

She and the Prince were dancing together like two long-lost lovers reunited (her brief slip of attention notwithstanding), when up above our heads the grand old clock began to peel its hourly refrain. She stiffened suddenly, coming awkwardly to a halt in the middle of the dance that swirled on around them. With one speaking, desperate glance at the Prince, she tore herself from his arms and made for the Grand Staircase with great haste. Before the clock had begun to intone the first of its dozens tolls, she had disappeared into the night. Prince Florian stood in shock, understandably so, but quickly followed, dodging around waltzing couples and taking the steps two at a time in a very romantic, if not precisely princely, manner.

_H_é_las_, his passionate exploit was to come to naught. He returned to the ballroom, long of face, depressed of spirit, and slumped of shoulder, cradling – of all the ridiculous things – a lady's silk slipper.

My lord, you cannot imagine the furore of speculation, the frisson of conjecture that consumes us. Every young woman of marriageable age to search and only a dancing slipper for a clue – a most fraught and mystifying maiden hunt, this. I assure you I will keep you informed to the very minute. We simply must invite some of your fiancée's family to Twelfth Night this year; they are too much fun.

* * *

><p><em>That was the last ever Andersen Sanders letter, you guys! And those of you who have been paying attention will not be freaking out and know that there are still letters from Anders to come. But that is the last we'll ever hear from the delightfully foppish, ever grandiloquent A.S. We are ridic close to the end, just four more to go in fact, eep.<em>

_Bemoaner of beds in rooms, you're a star even when I occasionally forget to leave you messages at the end of chapters - or perhaps particularly when._


	35. Brigitta

To Vald.

From Anders.

From the beginning is the only way to write this. I arrived back at the witch of the city's lair to find a note propped up on mantelpiece in my room. A lady named Aschen had been calling the witch of the city since a quarter hour past midnight with a request that I visit her before dawn.

Her town house was under heavier guard than yesterday; watchmen on each corner not even attempting subtlety. The wall of the orchard was bathed in silver light with nary a convenient shadow. All dressed in blue, I kissed my fingers to the Moon above and maybe it gave me luck. No alarm was called as I made my way through the trees. There were no lights lit in the house. I fiddled with the lock until it gave in.

I found Aschen in a small sitting room on the second floor, sitting in the darkness, still as a queen. The room was cold. I closed the door as quietly as I could, and we were alone with the Moon gazing in at the window.

"So it is the spy not the dandy who answers the call," she said.

"Your powers of observation do you credit, my lady." I sketched a bow.

"Your performance in the ballroom this evening, and this witch of the city character, have intrigued me sufficiently to think a favour from you is worth something." The words were glib enough but sounded stilted in the quiet room.

"Such condescension fills my heart with warmth." I looked in askance, and she nodded at the settee opposite her, so I took the chance to stretch out in it. "And what kind of favour couldn't wait until dawn?"

"The important kind."

"I should hope so, at two o'clock in the morning."

"By eight, it would be too late; I'd already be gone. I want you to understand," she said to me, her eyes very serious and hands folded neatly in her lap, "that I love my country. If there was a threat to it, if we were on the brink of a war forced on us, then I would not be doing this. I might still invite you here but I would do it to deceive you. I would lie, and dissemble, and spread false information, and fight to my last breath to defend my country."

"I understand, my lady," I said.

"No, I don't think you do. Because it is not my country that needs defending, is it?"

Something like hope, for us, and sorrow, for the hunted look shadowing her face, bloomed in my breast.

"I need you to know I don't do this lightly," she said. "I love my country but I have never wanted anything to do with politics, and never again with wars. This isn't treason." Her eyes gleamed with tears, and she glared at her hands still lightly clasped until she could continue. "It is not, _ich schwöre_: it is saving a life."

"Forgive me, my lady, but, your opening gambit not forgotten, you did not even know of the war until yesterday – what information could you possibly have found in the interim?"

The words seemed to steady her nerves, her countenance clear and composed as she faced me. "I have ears, and a brain, and a father who was the General der Kavallerie before his untimely death. _Ja_, _schmetterling_," she added smoothly. "Last night, his highness looked quite as shocked as you do now – though he seemed to come to appreciate a knowing ear. It is not only mermaids turned human who make valuable women, you know."

_Helvede_, but she was cold. "I have nothing but respect," I tried to tell her.

"I'm certain you believe that."

"If you're quite done poking at me, may I know whose life you're saving?"

"Brigitta Luxemburg Welf."

"I had my suspicions," I said, "though I hadn't found a way to tell her fiancé yet."

I'm sorry, Vald. I found a copy of one of my letters to you – you must have caught her putting the original back – with a letter of her own suggesting she would be more use alive and close to you while I rifled through the State Room. I wanted more evidence and reasons if there were any before I had to tell you. Forgive me.

"You supposed a girl is going to be killed for political convenience and the eventual acquisition of a few _beschissen _harbours, and you worry about her _fiancé_?"

"I most humbly beg your pardon for being human and caring about my friend." I had a headache brewing already. "Your understanding of the situation is vastly oversimplified."

Aschen shook her head. "As long as she is betrothed or wed to Valdmar Hesse-Kassel, Brigitta will die at the Twelfth Night celebrations in Kobenhaven, surrounded by witnesses invited from across the Continent who will see with their own eyes a malcontent Danmarchan faction do it, and her father will call it a declaration of war."

"Tyksland needs greater access to the sea to improve trade. You stand in the shadow of the Fransk Empire with no room to grow but north. It's not simply political convenience or a 'few' harbours: it's a change in the way the world as it stands now works."

"Are you honestly arguing the other side and defending your enemies just so you can patronise and dismiss me and the favour I hold you to?"

"I don't have to agree with something to understand it. Events may now be too monumental for a single life to matter one way or the other."

"You don't believe that, you _can't_. You're relying on the Fransk to come to your aid because they don't want the world to change any more than the Danmarches do, but it's highly likely, in a war to avenge royal blood spilt, they would wash their hands of the matter and deal with Tyksland later on their own terms."

"You're telling me nothing I don't know."

"Brigitta matters – she dies and neither of us win."

"You know her," I finally realised.

"Before she was effectively exiled in a convent because yet another female is no use to anyone? I might have," she conceded.

"_Hykleren_, your first thought was for your friend too." I rose and moved to the empty fireplace to give us both a little space. "What part are you playing in all this?"

"You wrote it yourself: _la Belle Inconnue._ They'll take me away before the sun rises, for - I'm not sure - a few weeks, a month or more. Watch what the prince does tomorrow and how the people react; you'll understand."

There was a silence.

I knocked my knuckles against the mantelpiece "Royal engagements aren't broken that easily." Vald, I'm so sorry, but I know you would not want her in danger. I know you would do anything to keep her from dying. "My prince reneging would offend the Old Eagle; he'd use it as an excuse to start a war anyway."

"Brigitta wouldn't be the first noblewoman to decide her life better spent in a nunnery than marriage. You Danmarchans have a tradition of it, don't you? And from there you use as many of these witches as you have, as many as you need to, to keep her safe."

"They'll send another girl, a cousin or a duke's daughter, it'll start all over again. Unless there was a..." I had to stop because it's blindingly obvious when you think about. Blindingly, stupidly obvious. It's stupid, really.

"I can't help that," Aschen was saying. "There's only so much I can do and I shouldn't even be doing this."

"No. No, it's – there's already a perfect candidate, as it happens ... so very useful of us to be keeping spares, ha."

"I don't pretend to understand what you're failing to say, but I do have your word that Brigitta will be safe?"

"Yes, of course. To the fullest extent of my abilities and luck, I'll keep her from harm. And now I need to – the thing I need to be doing is seeing to arrangements so I need to take my leave... It has been an unexpected pleasure to meet you, Aschen," I said and took one of her hands.

"The circumstances were unfortunate but likewise, Andersen."

The usual flourishes didn't seem right so our gazes held as did our hands, sober and sincere.

Ans I had to leave because it really is stupidly obvious, _er det ikke_. Who held sway in your court for a year before Brigitta was released from her convent? Who is commonly held to have been sent away to gallivant about the world because your fiancée didn't like the proximity of an earlier paramour? Who slept before your door and watched you as though you were the brightest gift of Creation? Who danced for you, _for fanden da også_? Who else has prior claim to you, before any noblewoman, sister, or daughter the Tyks can produce, but Delfin?

I don't think she understands, not really. I tried to explain it to her but she only asked me if it would make my heart lighter, and I said it would have to, because how could it not? Of course it would, to divert a war – in what plane of existence would that not make me happy?

The witch of the city has this – I don't know what it is –a passageway between doors, one here and the other in Kobenhavn, or any city, I suppose. Delfin will have gone through it, with this letter for explanation as soon as I have finished writing it. Hopefully she and the witch will not lose themselves between their point of entry and the palace – obviously not, if you are reading this.

I find I can't return just yet. There are still things that need looking into here.

Truly, Vald, I'm sorry I'm not with you to soften the blow, that these words I've wrestled to the paper are so insufficient.

_Gud bevare dig_, Vald.

* * *

><p><em>I know I was meaning to post this on my Christmas Eve, Captain, but I had a crisis of ... well, crisis points. You should post another story so I actually have things to say in these notes.<em>


	36. Anders

Marie-Therese,

There's something that I lack the courage to say to your face. I'm an idiot. It is absurd to be hiding this among your things, I know, but if I try to say more than a pleasant goodbye before you step through a door and out of the role of my Delfin forever, I cannot trust I won't throw myself at your feet and beg you to stay. I hope you will find someone to read this to you. One of the witches maybe; it would be less humiliating if it weren't a real, normal person. But not the witch of the flowers, anyone but her. And not Vald – if Vald is reading this you must make him stop now, he will find a way to ruin everything if he knows so you must stop him. Even though it's too late because if he's this far, _pis det_, he'll already know what I can't say.

I love you. That's the long and the short, the breadth, the depth, the general scope of the thing. I love you. I can't tell you how much or how long or why – I mean, I can tell you why, it's because it's you. You, impossible and maddening and so perfectly imperfect, so perfect to me. I want to give you poetry and all I can find is this stuttering repetition: I love you. My heartbeat is yours.

I won't be coming home, not for a while at least, until you're settled. Vald's a good man. He's the best of men. _Mit hjerte_, you deserve better words than these. But I love you and it's too big for stupid marks on a page. It's like this.

There is a man alone walking down a beach as fog rolls softly in. And I might ask who is the man. How high is the tide. Is the light of the moon enough to see by. How long will the fog last. Why is the man here. Did he stumble this way aimlessly or did he come at precisely the time to precisely the place he meant to. Who does he expect to see coming towards him from out the mist. Will someone reach out their hand behind them to find him. Where is he from. Does he carry a weapon or is he a weapon. Or a signal. Is he a threat to my country; that is a question I will always ask. How much will he cost me–_us_ in the end. Do the Moon and stars always hide their faces whenever he walks this way alone. Why does the man cry as though his heart is breaking when a wave licks over his feet and sea foam clings to his ankles. Will the fog never lift.

I can ask question after question, argue about it for days until I'm begged to stop, but I only know one answer. All my words about the man, the beach, the fog are useless and sad and unbearably painful unless I am behind a window with you looking out at him.

Anders

* * *

><p><em>Merry Christmas, Captain.<em>


	37. The Grandfather

_If only fanfiction would allow me the luxury of strike-throughs. Please indulge me in imagining the fragments without punctuation have been crossed out._

* * *

><p>To Vald.<p>

From Anders.

How is

_Ja så_, the reason for Aschen's role becomes clear. At her suggestion, I watched the royals as they announced the magical disappearance of the prince's beloved and his intention not to rest nor sleep 'til he has found her again. And watched the populace so enthralled by the romanticism of it all. Vald, you will not believe the feeling around town. _For helvede_, Vald, it's so clever I could cry. The dashing prince so supposedly in love he'll search the whole kingdom for her is fairy tale enough, but with only a slipper as evidence there is this subtle mania that it could be _anyone_. At any moment a perfectly ordinary girl could be plucked off the street and become a princess. Already this city would do anything for their royals, wouldn't hear a bad word against them, and darling Flori is touring the whole country next. A war of vengeance would be righteous, a noble decision. So _fanden_ clever I could spit.

This is useless

This is a terrible excuse for a letter; I pity you having to read it. Anyway, I'd walked the city for hours surrounded by jubilant crowds and delightedly scandalised gossip, and in a fit of self-pity went to the cathedral to pray. Desperate times and all that. The Archbishop, of an advance age, still with a head of white hair and beard but his top lip shaved smooth, came and sat next to me. Gripping his silk-gowned knees, he lowered himself into the pew with difficulty. His pale blue eyes were a little rheumy and wet but decisive behind square spectacles. The backs of his hands were mottled purple, pressed dead white over bony knuckles that seemed near about to break the skin.

"Were you looking for the princess? She has not come in today," he said, the words taking a while to find their way from his mouth.

"No," I said, "I know precisely where she is. Some business has called her away, back to the Danmarches."

"I am sorry to hear it. She was a comfort to me in these last days when everyone wants to swaddle me up and pretend my mind is already gone. I'm dying," he added. "It is kinder sometimes to tell a man than let him guess and wonder."

"I am sorry."

"There is no need, my son. I have made my peace with it; the princess helped in that." He seemed quite happy to gaze up at the stained-glass saints and speak mostly to them. "She asked me questions of the eternal soul, and I had not thought of them since my student days. I visited again Augustine and Aquinas, and they welcomed me like old friends. I am content; my soul will ever be an imperfect thing, but I have done as well as I can with it. I will not be ashamed to present the Lord with my talents."

"How nice for you," I said in the pause.

"There is something the princess said to me, that a good and upright soul is the most beautiful thing and creatures, if they could feel, must mourn the lack of them. A fish has no immortal soul, and shall never live again; like the green sea-weed, when once it has been cut off, can never flourish more. A man, on the contrary, has a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars; so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see. I had not thought to feel pity for a fish, but the princess has a great heart. Did she come by this eloquence through you – what are your thoughts?

"I give my soul no thought except when I'm asked to on Sundays." I really would be a terrible diplomat. "There is far too much to be done to waste time polishing one's metaphysical silver."

"If you do not tend to your soul, what salvation shall there be for you beyond the grave?"

"Why not ask this, Archbishop: If my soul does not give me the strength and love to save my people in the here and now, what use have I for life after death?"

"My son, that is a blasphemous thought, and unworthy."

"_Ah oui, pas de cours_," I drawled, "speak to me of worthiness when your churches hoard the food I need to stop a famine, speak to me of _worthiness_ while my country dies."

His eyebrows quirked, and there was a coldness in his eyes though I could not tell if it was anger towards myself or another. "What's this?"

"The greater part of the Danmarchan harvest was bought with false coin, and the stores for winter are now bereft; we will be lucky if we have many workers to break the ground in spring let alone the planting and reaping to follow. And while I would never throw about groundless accusations, it does seem a little coincidental that every monastery, nunnery, and chapel we passed from the border to Sonneschlafen has more food than it needs for five winters hidden beneath the ground." The consonants of my polite murmur hissed back at us from the unforgiving stone.

"I had not heard of this."

"The archbishop has not heard of what is happening in his own Church? How fortunate, how likely. You may tell your churches that there will be men coming, men with nothing to lose and swords in their hands, and we will be given what is ours. May God have mercy should you think to test us in this."

"My son," he said, his bony hand with tissue-thin skin gently reached for mine where it trembled, clenched upon my thigh, "might you ask before your soldiers demand? And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given you. I am an old man; it is a daily regret that I am not the man I once was. But some things do not change. The Church is for God, not the petty wars of man – this I have long held, though others have not agreed. I have a few months left, and I am not the man I once was, but I would see to it that if you ask, you will be listened to. Think on it, my son. _Möge Gott Sie_."

He stood, another slow labourious affair, carefully touched his lips to my brow and bade me follow him.

Vald, I know it seems ridiculous – though at this stage what avenues are left to us other than the ridiculous – but have we tried asking? The Archbishop gave me a letter, with his ring which I have enclosed. It may come to nothing and it may be too little too late, but the winter will be long and cold whether we have our pride or not.

I leave it in your hands.

How is she?

* * *

><p><em>This is a very different letter than the one I would have written a week ago. But it makes sense because this has been one of my greatest difficulties in writing with <em>The Little Mermaid_. H.C.'s LM wants a soul because without it there can be no salvation, which is all very well and good but surely a soul is more than a ticket to heaven, surely it means something in the here and now. So this letter is sort of, but not entirely, a conversation between me and the estimable H.C._

_R.I.P 31 Jan 2013_


	38. From Vald

_I just want you to take a good look at the 'To' and 'From' there. I know you've gotten used to ignoring it but, please, just for me?_

* * *

><p>To Anders.<p>

From Vald.

There is hope we will find some use for you yet. Everyone here had been thinking of swords not prayerbooks and human kindness. The Blackfeet have been sent. I think, though I couldn't swear to it, that I saw your father looking proud.

As to the other, you said that I am the sea, not like or similar as my family are, that I _am_, and it is one of the truths of my life that when you use words they mean something – they create worlds out of nothings. So I went to the sea and called on the sea witch. She reminds me of the girl, very big eyes. I asked her what spell had been placed on the girl. She said merfolk lack an immortal soul, and that is what the girl wanted, so the witch gave her a chance to find a man who would love her so dearly that when they were joined in marriage a part of his soul would slip into her. The witch laughed then, a disgusting, wet sound. Mermaids can live for centuries but she isn't a mermaid anymore, not with those legs, she said so herself, and her body is wasting away for want of a soul.

With that forewarning, it almost made sense when I woke up too early this morning with the girl standing over my bed, knife in hand, under the erroneous impression that you do not love her. (That was not a little bit unkind, if you don't mind me saying.) Did you think I would not see through you, brother? If you loved her less, you wouldn't have spent so much time, energy, and eloquence not telling me you loved her. Who has ever stood on her own two feet when you were trying so hard to sweep her off them? Who has ever understood you to your heart? Who has ever turned you so completely upside down in frustration but me? Brother, who but me?

It was only later we found the letter you had planted on her. Quite sweet when you put your mind to it, aren't you? But still she had a shadow of a doubt in her eyes. Because you see, the witch of the sea told her that she could only share a soul with someone who loves her perfectly, above all, even his country – and you sent her away, you heartless bastard.

I told her that we, the people who love you and whom you love, we take it on faith. We trust that you love us before anything else, we live in the certainty of that and do not ever ask you to choose. To choose between us and the thousands of people who face war in the spring after the hardest of winters. We never, ever ask you to tear your heart in two. We can disagree all we like with your decisions – like this frankly ass-about-backwards, _stupid_ one about marrying us off – it is the only way you will learn to shed the weight of the world from your shoulders, but we do not ever ask you to choose.

And sometimes we have to make the decisions for you.

Stop being an idiot and come home; I miss your stupid face and Delfin is waiting for you. At some point in your mystical wandering you received a very aggrandised idea of yourself, and somehow got it turned about in your head who is the prince and who is the useless youngest son of a lensgreve. Who is called to make sacrifices for the good of his country and who should stop making everything his sole responsibility. The original choice you set before me, if you'll let me remind you (not that I'd for a moment assume you had _forgotten_ something), was between a fragile flower or my own cousin.

I choose my cousin, brother.

You can thank me later.

* * *

><p><em>The end.<em>

_That's it. A year and a half ago, I wrote those words, and now you've read them so it's finished._

_Captain, thank you for loving Anders more than anyone; he's ever and always yours._

(Postscript_. Vald's not kidding about the original choice Anders set before him – go back and read the very first paragraph.)_


	39. Ceci n'est pas une AN

_Sorry if I got your hopes up; this isn't a new chapter. More another look at the last letter. But obviously _not_ an A/N disguised as a chapter because that is not allowed by fanfiction rules._

_This is the genius guile that brought you the spy Andersen Sanders._

_I've been overwhelmed by all your kind words, particularly the number that showed up in my inbox truncated due to length. And all the people who favourited without saying something, I love you too, and would usually send you a message of appreciation but my life is a bit complicated at the moment. Y'all are adorable so I wanted to give you a present in return._

_From one month and six days into writing this story (just before 9.17pm – I'm not even kidding I have a time-stamped fb message about it), I knew that Vald was going to whack Anders upside of the head and finish the story _right_ because Anders couldn't. But there was there was this big unavoidable, inescapable stumbling block to my plans._

"No," said the old woman [the little mermaid's grandmother], "unless a man were to love you so much that you were more to him than his father or mother; and if all his thoughts and all his love were fixed upon you,[...]"

_However not particularly healthy that seems, H. C. had made it canon. So I wrote a letter where Anders did what so many readers hoped he would and went after Del:_

Vald, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't do it, can't let her go. That can't be the last thing I said to her, the last time I saw her. I don't expect you to forgive me, or your father, or my father, or anyone – I know this is the worst betrayal but I can't – I need her.

_I broke Anders._

_About this time, the Captain asked me if Del was going to get her hands on the Knife and I thought it'd be a nice nod to the original, and, since I already had Vald writing a letter, very easy to tell of. I tucked the idea away in my mind, along with the terrible knowledge that I'd managed to break Anders, and started NaNoWriMo (i.e. I've left what you're about to read in its nano state because I think it's interesting and this is the internet so I can do what I like). _

_Then one night, Vald strolled up to me and said, in his beautiful, well spoken, calm, princely marvellous voice, "Dude, I got this."_

__.o.

She stood over me with a / I woke up to find Delfin in my room / bed chamber (nope, too formal), standing by my bed with a wicked big ass knife in her hand, the kind they use to gut cattle with / fish with? You gut animals with it, whatever. /I woke up when a weight pulled down one edge of my bed. I opened my eyes and there was Delfin, sitting on my bed, with a wicked big ass knife, glimmering sharp, the kind they use to gut sharks. Really big.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. "The witch of the sea put you up to this." I know, I never let anyone answer a question because I am already answering it for them, you can tell me of it later, but at least I know how to move a conversation along instead of stringing it out like you.

"You are not scared / you have no fear," she said in that pale curious voice of hers – I still cannot get used to it, sound coming out of her mouth. "I have a knife."

"I can see that. But you are not going to use it on me," I told her calmly, and moved my hand slowly until I could take the knife off her. "See, you would have killed me in my sleep if you had meant to do it."

"I am supposed to kill you." Cannot say that did not send a shiver down my spine, but I am tough, I can take it – even if 'it' is somewhat pretty girls revealing their intent to murder me as I sleep.

"Glad you changed your mind."

She sat looking carefully at her clasped hands in her lap. Laying the knife to one side out of reach, I dared to reach over and touch her hands.

"What is it you are supposed to be doing? Killing me, obviously, but why?"

"The witch of the sea, she told me that I would need a soul to keep living but I cannot have a soul if no one loves me, you know of this, yes? Yes, you went to talk to the witch of the sea, she told me. You are very good to look after your Anders' friends even when you do not like them."

"I do like you. Anders likes you so I must like you."

"Very good. The witch of the sea said she could knit me or weave me or ... I do not know this word in your tongue / language, what is where two waters meet and they come together?"

"A confluence, I think."

She nodded. "She said she would confluence (I thought about correcting her use of a noun as a verb but thought it would make me sound too much like you and that might be painful to her) your soul with parts of me if I could get it out of your body with this knife." She looked at the knife again and I judiciously edged it further away. (Or at least that's what she would have said if we were making up our own canon now, try it again.) /

"What is it you are supposed to be doing? Killing me, obviously, but why?"

"I need a soul to keep living with legs but I cannot have a soul if no one loves me, yes? My sisters did not like it and went to the witch of the sea. I can turn back into a mermaid if I could get your life out of your body with this knife." She looked at the knife and I judiciously edged it further away. "Why it is you, I do not know – I think to work it should be Anders. We fishes do not understand love; we understand family but not this love."

"What made you change your mind?"

I felt a blossom of warmth on the back of my hand where it lay over hers and realised that she was crying silently.

"If I killed you it would hurt Anders, and I cannot hurt him – maybe I should not want to kill you but it is mainly that Anders will hurt. I do not have your morality, I am a fish, I killed many things that were a danger to me, or would have meant my survival if they were dead – and if I killed you, Anders could not love me, he would not forgive me for taking away the other person / the second person he loves, and he will have neither of you two here with him. I do not want to live if I cannot be loved – I cannot live, it is not in the power of the deal we struck to let me live, but I would not want to live anyway."

"You know, there are more than two people that Anders loves; not just Annah and I," I hinted.

"His father, your father, I think sometimes his brothers, this country..." she trailed off and looked at the sparkling shoes on her feet, shining even though I block all light from the room when I sleep, as liquid crystal as you described them. (Except we never actually did, oops)

"Now who's the idiot. Not any of them. You."

"I don't think he –"

"Trust me. I have known him / I have loved the man almost my entire life, certainly most of what I remember of it. If he loved you less, he would not have spent so much time and energy /wiliness / guile trying to hide / not telling me that he loved you." Did you really think I couldn't read between the lines, you idiot? Really? You deserve everything she throws at your head. Who else have you ever let go on one of your little spying missions with you? Who else have you not discussed the physical attractiveness of with me? Who has ever turned you so completely upside down in frustration but me? Brother, who but me?

The girl / Your girl finally looked at me then. "He may love me but not enough. The sea witch says it must be above all others, before everything, he does not love me enough – he sent me away."

"For one thing, he does not know you love him. You forgot to tell him that while you were so nobly not making him feel obliged to say he loved you out of that stupid sense of responsibility he has. And for another, he might love you before the Danmarches, before his family, before me, above everything – but as the people who love him, we don't ask him to choose. We never, ever ask him to tear his heart in two. Argue all you like with his decision – like this frankly ass-about-backwards stupid one, and do not doubt I will be sending him a letter in the morning telling him just how pathetically obtuse this idea of marrying us off is – it is the only way he will learn to shed the weight of the world from his shoulders, but do not ever ask him to choose."

.o.

_Kia ora, Vald. Of course he wouldn't write all that in a letter so you have the version we ended up with, which for reasons I prefer, but this way is fun too._

_Thank you all so much. You've made a difficult week brighter._

xx Clar

_(Postscript - because what epistolary novel doesn't end with a postscript? - keep an eye out for three shorts about Annah, Aschen, Brigitta.)_


	40. Epilogue

Anders opened the door and knew that it was her even though she was a black shadow against a summer-lit window. He knew like a blow to his heart it was her before his poor brain could fully form a thought to that effect.

He took a step into the room and his mouth opened to say her name, when – so very unusually for him – the words stumbled on his tongue and fell flat on their figurative faces. Was she Delfin or Marie-Therese? This was possibly the most important moment of his life and he had no idea. Not a clue.

The feeling left him breathless and dizzy and not a little bit sick to his stomach – as if being in love wasn't enough for a man to deal with in the first place.

She turned towards him then, and even that simple movement looked like dancing. As she took three steps towards him, away from the light so it slid across her cheek and he could see her face for the first time in far too long (five days), his heart twinged – honestly, like someone plucked at his heartstrings – because there was not a shadow of pain in her eyes. The Sun's glass slippers glittered on her feet, though how he knew that when he hadn't been able to tear his eyes from her face was yet another mystery. He still hadn't danced with her. He hadn't done so many things with her, but he would, just as soon as he figured out which name to call her by.

"Anders." Her eyes were as calm as the lake, the heartless baggage, and her voice cool water and he drank it in, gulped it down with the embarrassing need of one terminally parched. "I am trying to be angry with you but it is not working, because you are here, and I am too happy being able to see you to remember why it is important that I am angry."

He almost laughed but that couldn't be the first thing to pass his lips when he saw her again. He needed to get her to forgive him for almost losing her (more than that, for deliberately trying to misplace her) and the only way to do so was to begin with her name. But he still couldn't decide what that was.

"Is this what being in love is? I do not like it. Your prince said I should make you ... do something. That I should be cold and say only hard things until I know that ... Prince wrote it down for me so I could remember but I can't let you read it to me because you are not to know about it. I loved you before and could still call you an idiot, but now I am so happy you are here I think I might break. Is this crying? Anders. Anders." She repeated his name like a prayer. "Anders, don't make me leave again."

He couldn't stand it. His arm went around her waist, a hand to the back of her head, his lips to hers, clinging with more of that mortifying thirst. A dying man given reprieve. He tasted tears of salt like sea foam but banished the thought. This was perfect, in spite of or because he was holding her too tightly, and their legs tangled in her skirts, and their teeth scraped which he usually hated but couldn't find a part of himself interested in caring at the present moment. This was – well, it was really too maudlin a thought for a person trying to put his tongue in another's mouth – but it was like claiming something back from the river. Maybe not all of it, but the part that he had been trying so hard to fix on his own for so long and couldn't. Here she was handing it to him with his name said against his lips, and her fingers pulling at the hair at the nape of his neck, and her body leaning against him in trust.

She pulled away so that she could take a few deep breaths. "We will be doing more of that. It was much better than in the woods – I can feel all of it now, you know?" Her brows pulled together slightly in concern. "Are you sick? I have never been saying so much without you telling me I am wrong."

It must have been he just needed to get that kiss out of the way because the answer was obvious. He could ask for help now. "What do I call you, _mit hjerte_?"

She tipped her head to one side. "Marie-Therese when there are people who are not friends, and are friends but you don't want them to know I was a mermaid, and when you love me enough to write me a letter. But Delfin when you love me too, and want to pull out your hair, and talk at my head. When I say you are an idiot you will call me Delfin, but Marie-Therese some of the times when you are being slippery–"

He kissed her to stop the rest of the catalogue. He might have felt a touch more sympathy for her complaints of talking at a person's head but didn't for a moment consider giving up the practice.

"Del, you're no help at all," he said when his need was quenched.

And she smiled, starting slowly with her lips, lighting her whole face, until her eyes burned like stars searing the heart of him, in a way he had never been able to describe in his letters to Vald. And wouldn't have, even if he could, because this was only for them.

* * *

><p><em>It's been a year since I posted the last chapter of Anders, so consider this an anniversary present from me to you. <em>


End file.
